Governance Structures Of Rural Land And Performance Differences

Governance structure of rural land refers to the concrete mode that is intentionally selected to achieve the goals of rural land use and management under the specific institutional environment,converting the rules-in-form to the rules-in-use.Given the same goal of rural land use and management,there exist different governance structures,the performance of which also differs.In this regard,the study tries to investigate the following scientific question:why do governance structures of rural land and their performance show great divergence?Initially,based on the essence of governance structure,the study considers governance structure as a core and develops a theoretical framework for analyzing rural land governance structures,comprehensively illustrating the underlying logic concerning governance fit of rural land use and management and its performance,that is,"determinants-governance fit-performance comparison".More specifically,biophysical conditions,actor characteristics,transaction properties and institutional arrangements jointly determine the governance fit.Further,the specific governance structure induces the specific performance of rural land use and management,including resource allocation,distribution effects and process efficiency.Subsequently,taking three rural land use and management practices i.e.,rural-to-urban construction land transfers,rural residential land redevelopment and rural land-development offset as examples,the study conducts the empirical analysis of rural land governance structures.The governance analysis of rural-to-urban construction land transfers shows that given the institutional environment,different governance structures have significantly distinctive impacts on the performance of rural land use and management,corroborating the logical chain of "governance fit-performance comparison".Land acquisition pertained to hierarchy and direct transfer(i.e.,rural construction land is allowed to be directly transferred for urban construction use)pertained to market are the two typical types of governance structures of rural-to-urban construction land transfers.The performance of the above two governance structures is quantitatively assessed based on a partial equilibrium model,using the first-hand data from a pilot area i.e.,Deqing County,Zhejiang Province as well as the econometric approach Compared with land acquisition,direct transfer reduces the over intervention and regulation on rural-to-urban construction land transfers exerted by the government Consequently,the rural construction land price raises more than 5 times,the ratio of rural-to-urban construction land over-transfer decreased by 7.16%,indicating that the land allocative efficiency is improved.Moreover,direct transfer leads to a welfare gain for the rural sector,in particular by inducing redistribution effects from the urban to the rural sector,up to 137.51 million YuanThe governance analysis of rural residential land redevelopment shows that given the institutional environment,the interactions among biophysical conditions,actor characteristics and transaction properties affect the governance fit of rural land,and different governance fit distinguishes the performance of rural land use and management,which corroborate the logical chain of "determinants-governance fit-performance comparison".Taking 27 cases of rural residential land redevelopment as a sample,the study explores the determinants of governance fit and performance of rural residential land redevelopment,by a method of archetype analysis.The findings suggest that the governance structures of rural residential land redevelopment significantly vary,including government-led mode,government-participated mode,self-organized mode and enterprise-participated mode,etc.Biophysical conditions(e.g.,size,location and quality of rural residential land),actor characteristics(e.g.,type,size,interest homogeneity,leadership/entrepreneurship and social capital)as well as transaction properties(e.g.,complexity,specificity,uncertainty and time horizon)jointly affect the governance fit of rural residential land redevelopment Different governance structures distinguish the performance of rural residential land redevelopment in rural living environment improvement,rural income increase and rural vitality enhancementThe comparison between H Village of Jiashan County,Zhejiang Province and S Village of Jintang County,Sichuan Province verifies the basic findings of the archetype analysis and concretely illustrates the mechanism how various factors affect governance fit and performance of rural residential land redevelopment.On the one hand,the sizes of rural residential land and actors mutually affect the extents to complexity and specificity of rural residential land redevelopment.The complexity,specificity and uncertainty of rural residential land redevelopment demand different types of governance structures.The size,interest homogeneity,leadership/entrepreneurship and social capital of actors determine the potential supply of governance structures.Further,under the government-led mode,the redevelopment scheme fails to meet the context-specific conditions and the living convention and demands of rural households;moreover,the local government obtains the distribution advantages,the rural-urban social wealth gap is not significantly narrowed and the rural vitality is not enhanced.However,the self-organized mode enforces the rural residential land redevelopment in accordance with the local conditions,and the living quality of the rural area is properly improved.The rural area dominated revenue distribution and the development of rural tourism indicate that the self-organization enables the social wealth to be continuously shifted from urban to rural areas and enhances rural vitality.Additionally,the self-organization better aligns with the biophysical conditions,actor characteristics and transaction properties of the rural residential land redevelopment,which induces the higher process efficiency.The governance analysis of rural land-development offset shows institutional arrangement exerts a profound impact on governance fit,once again corroborating the logical chain of "determinants-governance fit-performance comparison".Balancing cultivated land occupation and reclamation in China and the eco-account in Germany are the typical governance structures of land-development offset.The international comparison finds that the institutional arrangements in China and Germany significantly differ in property rights,legal basis,land use planing system and natural resources accounting.The differences in the institutional arrangements contribute to the different governance fit,namely,balancing cultivated land occupation and reclamation pertained to hierarchy and eco-account pertained to market,ultimately resulting in the performance differences of land-development offset in the two countries.In light of the international experience,the cultivated-land-orientated offset in China can be gradually transformed to the ecology-orientated offset,with the accumulative reform on the institutional arrangement to foster unambiguous property rights,sound legal basis,spatial planing system with sufficient transparency and authority as well as land ecological value based natural resources accountingTo the best of the author’s knowledge,the study may contribute to the extant literature from the following aspects.1)The logical chain of"determinants-governance fit-performance comparison" is illustrated and corroborated,and the empirical evidence from China is provided for the study on governance structures.2)The study follows the classical logic of "discriminating alignment",whereas considers various determinants of governance fit,containing biophysical conditions,actor characteristics,transaction properties and institutional arrangements:meanwhile,the study not only focuses on the differences of process efficiency induced by the different extents to the discriminating alignment between various factors and governance structures,but also investigates allocative efficiency and distribution effects led by governance structures under the specific institutional environment.Hence,the study promotes the integration of new institutional economics(particularly,transaction cost economics).political economics(particularly.Bloomington school of political economy)and neoclassical economics in the research on governance structure of rural land and its performance.