Empirical Research On The Institution Of Land Expropriation Compensation Based On Farmers’ Satisfaction

Since China’s reform and opening up, along with the industrialization and urbanization accelerating, the infrastructure construction and industrial land has been increasing, and the contradiction between supply and demand of urban land is increasingly prominent, thus resulting in a large number of rural land expropriated as urban construction land. The essence of the rural land expropriation is the result of land optimal allocation and efficient use as a productive factor, to a large extent can produce external interests, increase social wealth, and hence increase the welfare of the subject owned the original land property right. However, due to the unique structure of urban-rural dual land property rights in China, farmers as the subject of the original land property right don’t have the fair and legitimate opportunities and ways to share the added value of social wealth, instead, their legal rights and interests of land could not be ensured. Therefore, while the land expropriation is providing more space for the development of social economy, the problem must be solved as followed: how to give a reasonable compensation to land-expropriated farmers, namely how to realize the industrialization and urbanization at the same time without sacrificing the farmers’ interests. The research on both farmers’ cognitive status of land expropriation compensation, and how to determine and implement the compensation and resettlement based on farmers’ will, has important reference value to solve the related problems.In this paper, it carried out an empirical research on the effects of land expropriation institution and policy, applying the methods of theoretical analysis, empirical research, questionnaire investigation, comparative analysis, econometric model analysis and typical cases analysis, based on probing into the status quo and problems of the institution and policies of land expropriation in China, using the household survey data from the provinces of different economic level distributed in the eastern, western and middle part of China, and focused on the impacts of compensation standard and compensation modes on farmers’ satisfaction. The innovation points in this paper were mainly as followed:First, it investigated the land-expropriated farmers’ satisfaction from the perspective of farmers, and focused on the two important factors, which were compensation standard and compensation mode, as the objective variables, while the other factors were classified as control variables. Then it made an in-depth analysis of the impacts of two objective variables on farmers’ satisfaction. Comparing with the normal method of setting all the factors as the equal status, this econometric model is more specific and the conclusions are more close to the facts.Second, it calculated the actual amount of farmers’ compensation under different modes of the same base period using the field survey data, which are excluded inflation. And it also introduced the cross-products of compensation payment and compensation mode to deeply analyze the indirect impact of compensation mode on land-expropriated farmers’ satisfaction.Our interesting findings from the research are mainly as followed.I. Incidence rate and regional characteristics of land expropriation. According to the survey data, rural land expropriation phenomenon has been more and more common, a quarter of the sample households had ever experienced land expropriation, that is at least one in every four households’ land has been expropriated for non-agricultural uses. And the incidence rate in the East is significantly higher than the Mid-West, and the region closer to its nearest city or county is more likely to experience land expropriation.II. Satisfaction of the land-expropriated farmers is not only affected by the absolute level of compensation standard, but more depends on the gap of the relative level. Through the econometric analysis, we found that even if the absolute level of the land expropriation compensation was not low, but if the requisition of land market prices was much higher, farmers would also feel dissatisfied for compensation. This means that the relationship between the compensation standard and the satisfaction is not isolated, which is influenced by economic factors and time factors. Under the control of economic factors and time factors, with the compensation standard increased, farmers’ satisfaction are more likely to be improved.III. Compensation modes have indirect effects on land-expropriated farmers’ satisfaction, especially social security mode is more popular with farmers. The compensation calculated by the output ratio method doesn’t equal to the actual compensation acquired by farmers, farmers’ compensation also depends on the compensation mode, and the actual amount of compensation varies a lot under different compensation modes. Through econometric model, we found that under the control of the economic factors and time factors, when the compensation with the social security mode was higher, it was more likely to improve farmers’ satisfaction. While the other modes have no significant impacts on farmers’ satisfaction, that proved the social security, by contrast, gained more farmers’ favors.