The Study On The Choice Of Vegetable Industrial Organization Model And The Influence On Farmers’ Income And Efficiency

The consumption of vegetables in China’s vegetable industry begins to develop towards high-end and personalized,while most of the vegetable producers are still scattered smallholders.Their ways of production and operation are far from developed.They cannot produce vegetables according to the demands of the consumers.The contradiction between consumers and smallholders hindered the further development of the vegetable industry and the promotion of the benefits of smallholders.In order to solve the contradiction,many kinds of vegetable industrial organization models came into being,with the development of vegetable industry since 1990s.The emergence of these industrial organization models has brought some questions to the academia:what are the influencing factors for farmers to choose different vegetable industrial organization models?What are the impacts of different vegetable industrial organization models on farmers?By discussing the above problems,references can be provided for the promotion and optimization of vegetable industrial organization models.Therefore,this study intends to analyze the choice of vegetable industrial organization models and the impact on farmers’ vegetable income and vegetable production technical efficiency,based on the data of vegetable farmers in Hebei and Zhejiang provinces.Specifically,first from the macro level,the development of Chinese vegetable industry and vegetable industrial organization system were analyzed.Next,from the micro level,the types and characteristics of Chinese vegetable industrial organization models were discussed.Then,based on the transaction cost theory,the theoretical framework of farmers’ choice of vegetable industrial organization models was constructed based on the perspective of uncertainty,and the influencing factors of farmers’ choice of vegetable industrial organization models were analyzed.Finaly,the empirical analyses about the impact of vegetable industrial organizational models on farmers’ vegetable income and production technical efficiency were conducted.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)Chinese vegetable industrial organization system has formed as the co-existence and coordination of producers,intermediaries,retailers and consumers.Based on the new institutional economics,Chinese vegetable industrial organization models can be divided into four categories:complete market exchange model,partial horizontal cooperation model,complete horizontal cooperation model and vertical coordination model.Each industrial organization model has great differences in farmers’ autonomy,service acquisition,transaction stability,transaction volatility,transaction guarantee,transaction dependence,and the possibility of opportunistic behavior.(2)Uncertainty influences farmers’ choice of vegetable industrial organization models.If production uncertainty increases,farmers tend to choose partial horizontal cooperation model,complete horizontal cooperation model and vertical coordination model,and tends not to choose complete market exchange model.If behavioral uncertainty increases,farmers tend not to choose vertical coordination model.Environmental uncertainty has a significant effect on farmers’ choice of partial horizontal cooperation model and complete horizontal cooperation model,and has no significant effect on farmers’ choice of complete market exchange model and vertical coordination model.(3)Different vegetable industrial organization models have different effects on farmers’ vegetable income.Compared with the complete market exchange model,partial horizontal cooperation model and complete horizontal cooperation model significantly increase farmers’ vegetable income.That is to say,if farmers join the vegetable cooperatives,they obtain significant improvement of vegetable income,no matter whether they have transactional relationship with cooperatives or not.However,the vertical coordination model has no significant advantages in promoting farmers’vegetable income compared with the complete market exchange model.(4)Different vegetable industrial organization models have different effects on farmers’ vegetable production technical efficiency.Compared with the complete market exchange model,partial horizontal cooperation model and complete horizontal cooperation model significantly increase farmers’ vegetable production technical efficiency.In other words,if farmers join the vegetable cooperatives,they obtain the increase of the vegetable prodction technical efficiency,regardless of whether farmers sell vegetables to cooperatives.Compared with the complete market exchange model,the vertical coordination model has no significant advantages in raising farmers’vegetable production technical efficiency.The main innovations of this study are as follows:(1)The innovation in the content.This study is systematically elaborated from three levels,including vegetable industrial organization system,vegetable industrial organization model and vegetable farmers,which covering multiple dimensions and levels.In the analysis of Chiness vegetable industrial organization model,this study presents a more detailed and novel classification criteria.The characteristics of different kinds of vegetable industrial organization models were also studied.Then the choices of all kinds of vegetable industrial organizaiotn models and the impacts on farmers’ vegetable income and production technical efficiency were also analyzed based on the perspective of farmers,which is innovative aomong the similar studies.(2)The innovation in the perspective.The theoretical framework of farmers’ choice of vegetable industrial organization models is constructed based on the perspective of uncertainty——a demension of transaction cost.The influencing mechanism of different kinds of uncertainties on the choice of vegetable industrial organization models was elaborated,which extends the theory and practice of the influence of uncertainty on the choice of industrial organization models.(3)The innovation in the method.In this study,the BFG two stage model and propensity score matching method were used to solve the selective bias caused by both the unobservable factors and observable factors,and to improve the accuracy of the estimation results when analyzing the impact of industrial organization models on farmers’ vegetable income,which is rare in the domestic literature and is innovative.