What do farmers want from China's Sloping Land Conversion policy design?

Abstract

The Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) is by far the most widely participated in the ecological construction in China with numerous farmer households. Multiple studies have examined the impacts of the sloping land conversion program. However, few of these studies have also examined land-holder perceptions about the policy instruments intended to encourage adoption of management practices. Information on how farmers react when SLCP characteristics are modified can be an important input to the design of such policies. This article investigates farmer's preferences for different design options in a specific SLCP aiming at encouraging farmers' participation. We use a choice experiment survey conducted in the Three Gorges Area to investigate farmers' ex-ante preferences for key elements of SLCP design, such as the range of sloping land conversion, the proportion of ecological forest and economic forest, the participation way, the enrollment duration and subsidy levels. A latent class logit model is used to model heterogeneity preference of farmers which allows us to estimate how they would trade-off different levels of these contract attributes against per-mu subsidy. Knowledge of such trade-offs can inform the hypothetical SLCP design. This article will not only allow us to provide some possible answers for policy makers about the local SLCP management but also can provide empirical results regarding the heterogeneous preference for the SLCP attributes in a broader context.