Empirical Study On The Behavior Of Farmer Household In The View Of New Institutional Economics

Under the background of market liberalization and economic globalization, China’s agriculture and national economy has entered into the new development stage, agriculture is facing with fierce market competition, and Chinese farmer households are also facing with greater challenges and market opportunities than ever before. Particularly, farmer households, who make and operate labor intensive agricultural products of high value, have become the main bodies participating in market operation, and their production and operation have turned to be professional gradually. Researching farmer households’ producing and operating behaviors as well as influencing factors, exploring characteristics of their producing and operating behaviors and system restrictions will be significantly theoretical and realistic to increase their producing incentives, and improve their production efficiency, and guide them to adapt to competitions of domestic and foreign markets, and enhance the competitiveness of the citrus industry as well.This Ph.D. dissertation makes a brief introduction of basic theories of new institutional economics firstly, then summarizes domestic and foreign literature related to producing and operating behaviors of farmer households, and then investigates natural properties of citrus production, and analyzes the behaviors of farmer households’ production and operation theoretically; and then adopt econometric analysis method to analyze farmer households’ will to plant citrus, and their demand for agricultural technologies, and the influences of their sales methods on revenues, and that of transaction cost on their options of sales method etc. with Chinese citrus planting farmer households as the object of study based on field survey data, and then further analyzes the major impact factors on the farmer households’cooperating behaviors to emerge and develop; and ends up with relevant recommendations to solve the relevant issues at last.The contributions and innovations of the paper can be included in the following three points:(1) it returns farmer households’demands on agricultural technologies to the entire process of one contract from agreement to implementation, sets up Logistic regression model, analyzes influences of transaction cost on farmer households’demands on agricultural technologies from the perspective of contract. It breaks through the traditional research perspective of analysis from static angle, and enriches the present vision of studies related to agricultural demands.(2) Specimen farmer households’major methods to sell citrus are generalized and concluded on the basis of investigated data, and they are classified according to transaction objects, transaction frequency and the uncertainty of transaction in view of transaction cost, and multiple linear regression model is further made to analyze the influences of different selling channels on farmer households’income. This research has expanded the research scope of farmer households’ selling methods, complementing the existing literature of same kind to some extent.(3) Based on the impact of farmer households choosing selling methods on their income, the index system measuring transaction cost is built, and the current empirical study on transaction cost and farmer households’selling methods is enriched by building Logistic model to analyzing the impact of transaction on farmer households’selling methods.The main contents and research conclusions are stated as follows:Firstly, farmer households’will to plant reflects their opinions and confidence in the future development of citrus industry, which is the crucial factor in determining whether the long-term development objectives of China’s citrus industry can be realized. This Ph.D. dissertation adopts Logit model to analyze farmer households’will to plant citruses using the microcosmic data of farmer households planting citrus in China’s main production areas, and the study result indicates that nearly70%of the investigated farmer households have strong will to plant citrus, and most farmer households are confident in the development of the citrus industry and are willing to expand their citrus planting area further if resources allow; organization degree of farmer households has certain positive but insignificant influences on their will to plant citrus, which also suggests that various kinds of professional citrus cooperatives don’t play a good role in driving them; moreover, farmer households’will to plant citruses are influenced by the multiple factors like the age of farmer household, and the will to participate in technical training, and the planting years of citruses, and the fact whether they know about market conditions and so on.Secondly, advanced agricultural production technologies can strengthen their production efficiency, improve the quality of agricultural products, enhance their participation in market competitiveness, increase family labor efficiency of farmer households, and add supply of agricultural products to meet the residents’needs. The dissertation makes use of the actual survey data of China’s main citrus production zones to analyze the influences of transaction cost on farmer households’ demands for agricultural technologies by setting up Logistic model. The analysis result indicates that transaction cost is the important factor affecting farmer households’ demands for agricultural technologies; specifically, whether the households, reflecting information cost, has communication and information receiving facilities, whether they can watch relevant programs of agricultural channels, and whether communications with other farmer households all have positive influences on farmer households’ demands for agricultural technologies; and whether households, reflecting the implementation cost variables, participated in technical training, and whether them can solve certain technical problems in production successfully all have positive influences on farmer households’demands for agricultural technologies significantly. Moreover, farmer households’characteristic variable is the important factor affecting their demands for agricultural technologies, and ages of households have negative influences on farmer households’demands for agricultural technologies; education degree and planting area have positive influences on their demands on agricultural technologies significantly as well.Thirdly, it makes use of the actual survey data of Yichang City and Hubei Province to analyze the influences of sales channels on farmer households’citrus revenues by setting up multiple linear regression models. The analysis result indicates that different sales channel options have significant influence on farmer households’citrus revenues; with respect to the sales of middlemen, farmer households’revenues increase about176Yuan per Mu by selling citrus themselves; the econometric model analysis suggests that the variables like citrus planting years of households, whether households received training, planting area and pesticide costs per mu invested by farmer households are the important factors affecting their revenues.Fourthly, the dissertation analyzes the influences of transaction cost on farmer households’options of sales methods to answer the "irrational" question in their sales methods by setting up Logistic model after analyzing the influences of different channels on their revenues. The study indicates that farmer households’options of selling citruses themselves can obtain higher prices, but the investigated farmer households chose middlemen to sell citruses under influences of transaction cost and individual characteristics of farmer households. Among the variables reflecting information cost, the variables of whether knowing about citrus market conditions and prices through middlemen have positive and negative influences on farmer households’option of self-selling respectively; among the variables reflecting negotiation cost, farmer households’opinions on quotation fairness degree of middlemen, difference variables of prices sold by farmer themselves and those sold by middlemen have positive and negative influences on farmer households’option of self-selling methods respectively; among the variables reflecting implementation cost, the variable of farmer households’shortest distance to agricultural product market has negative influence on farmer households’ option of self-selling method. At last, farmer households’individual characteristics have influences on their option of citrus sales methods. Households’education degree and whether family members engage in non-agricultural industries have positive influences on farmer households’ option of sell-selling method significantly.Fifthly, it explains the reason of farmer households’ cooperative behaviors by analyzing the establishment and development of a specific professional citrus cooperative. The analysis indicates that asset specificity in the production process of farmer households and cheating of dealing party in the process of transaction correspondingly are the main driving forces for farmer households to establish cooperatives. As for farmer households, establishment of cooperative can improve their market negotiation position, reduce transport cost, improve market competitiveness of agricultural products, and obtain additional profits, which are the causes of farmer households to cooperate. Moreover, farmer households cannot establish cooperatives without guidance and promotion of government. Because cooperatives established by farmer households will suffer from the dilemma of "collective logic", guidance or certain compulsive means of government playing an essential role in establishing a farmer cooperative.