The Bargaining Game Analysis On Land Expropriation Compensation Resettlement

According to the current "Land Management Law", collective land expropriation employs the method of "Announcement Land Expropriation", thus there is no need for the government to consult with the farmers whose land would be expropriated. The government only has to formulate the compensation and resettlement plan and make an announcement about it. But this method can easily cause the land expropriated farmers’ dissatisfaction and resistance which brings a lot of social contradictions and problems. As a result, more and more local governments begin to adopt the "Negotiation Land Expropriation" during which public participation would be introduced. The compensation and resettlement plan would be determined according to the result of the negotiation made by the government and the land expropriated farmers together. Especially in the eastern coastal area where the land may have a large appreciation space after the land expropriation, the negotiation for land compensation and resettlement has become a common phenomenon.The land compensation and resettlement negotiation helps to protect the farmers’ right to know and the right to participate. It gives full consideration to the farmers’ willingness to accept the differences, eases the people’s grievances, and avoids the confrontation. However, this pattern still has two obvious problems. The high cost is one of it. This pattern not only makes the monetary cost be highly increased than using the "Announcement Land Expropriation", but also takes a lot of time cost which affects the efficiency of land expropriation, even the economic development. Another problem is that this pattern encourages the land expropriated farmers to adopt various means to strive for economic interests. Sometimes those farmers even use an unconventional way to put pressure on the government, which brings new social contradictions and problems.Thus, whether the land compensation and resettlement negotiation suits for China’s national conditions or not, and how to regulate it from the system design aspect are the urgent problems to be studied and solved. At present, the research in this aspect is very insufficient, and the theory greatly lags behind the development of the practice. From the micro perspective, this paper uses game theory to analyze the game behavior and its equilibrium between the local government and the land expropriated farmers who are involved in the land compensation and resettlement negotiation, and then puts forward policy measures to regulate the land compensation and resettlement negotiation.Bargaining game theory is an important branch of the game theory. Based on the classical Rubinstein (1982) bargaining game model and according to the key features of the land compensation and resettlement negotiation, this paper discusses the changes of the game process and its equilibrium between the local government and the land expropriated farmers when the discount factor information is incomplete, the decision factors are introduced and bargaining interval range information is not sufficient respectively. It also verifies the theoretical derivation conclusion with the practical cases obtained by onsite investigation in Fujian province.Studies prove that:(1) If the local government can grasp the real information of the land expropriated farmers’ bargaining ability, they can put forward a land compensation and resettlement plan accepted by two sides through repeated negotiations. This will not lead to the conflicts in land expropriation; otherwise the land expropriation conflict is difficult to avoid.(2) The final decision of the land expropriation compensation negotiation will play a signal transmission function to both sides of the game and have an important impact on their game strategies. Unfair verdicts will make the land expropriated farmers take the unconventional relief measures.(3) If the land expropriated farmers have low psychological expectations on land compensation and resettlement level, the local government will take the positive status in the bargaining game; conversely, the local government will fall into a passive position, and the negotiations would break down easily.Based on the above studies, this paper proposes the following policy suggestions:(1) We should insist on land expropriation compensation resettlement negotiation.(2) The government should grasp the real information of the land expropriated farmers’ negotiation ability by doing the detailed investigation analysis to avoid triggering the land expropriation conflicts.(3) Through establishing the fair and reasonable dispute resolution mechanism for the land compensation and resettlement disputes, the government should guide the land expropriated farmers to express their interest demand through the legitimate channels. At the mean time, the government should also avoid the land compensation and resettlement negotiations coming to a deadlock to save the time cost of land expropriation.(4) By giving the land expropriated farmers a detailed explanation, the government should let them fully understand the constraint conditions that the government has, so as to avoid the land expropriated farmers having high expectations for land compensation and resettlement level and reducing the resistances during the land compensation and resettlement process.