Parcel-Level Land Use Decision-Making of Farmers is Influenced by Neighborhood, Kinship, and Socioeconomic Conditions

Abstract

Farmers are the direct users of agricultural land and their decision-making affects the agricultural landscape pattern. The influencing factors for farmer land use decision-making were studied, and a method for elucidating the micro-mechanism of the multi-agent and cellular automata models was proposed. Mengcha village is located in Mizhi County of Shaanxi Province in northwest China. The neighborhoods in the village, as well as the kinship networks and socioeconomic conditions of the farmers, were chosen for the calculation of neighborhood similarity (NBSLY), kinship similarity (KSSLY), and socioeconomic similarity (SESLY). At the parcel level, planted crops figure importantly in farmer decision-making and are expressed by parcel similarity (PCSLY). On the basis of the similarity values and two-dimensional tables of NBSLY-PCSLY, KSSLY-PCSLY, and SESLY-PCSLY, (1) NBSLY was weakly correlated with farmer decision-making (PCSLY), which did not diminish with distance between neighboring buildings in the village. (2) For KSSLY, brotherhood accounted for a considerable proportion of decision-making with 68.92% of brotherhoods having similar or pre-similar decision-making. KSSLY imposed considerable influence on farmer decision-making. (3) Farmer decision-making was correlated with SESLY. With increasing SESLY, PCSLY showed an increasing then decreasing tendency. The 2007 results were verified using 2008 data, and the validation yielded identical results for these years. Farmer decision-making is the result of interaction among many factors, and the comprehensive exploration of this issue necessitates support by detailed micro-data.