Property rights, village democracy, and household forestry income: evidence from China’s collective forest tenure reform

Abstract

ABSTRACT To investigate the effect of expanded property rights and, in particular, village democracy under China’s Collective Forest Tenure Reform (CFTR) on household forestry income, we employ quantile regression, drawing on the survey data from 658 rural households in three provinces belonging to China’s southern collective forest regions. The results indicate that: (1) both the expansion of household forestland property rights caused by CFTR and the village democratic procedure involved in the reform exert significant income effect; the income effect intensity of the expansion of forestland use right and disposal right is greater than that of beneficiary right, and the effect shows no significant difference among rural households with different forestry income scale. (2) the village democracy cannot only directly motivate rural household forestry income but also notably moderate the income effect of property rights expansion. Based on the above findings, this paper suggests that the forestland property right policy aimed at rural households be further refined, the rural households’ policy awareness of CFTR be enhanced and the grass-roots bureaucratic system be prevented from over-intervening in the implementation of public policy so as to further improve CFTR and enhance rural households’ forestry income.