How Does Adaptability Affect Labor Migration Decisions?

According to the seventh national census in 2020,China’s urbanization rate has reached 63.89 percent.The government has timely put forward the development concept of new-type urbanization.The continuous progress of new urbanization means that the labor force has to flow or migrate between different regions.In the study of labor migration based on human capital theory,the human capital level of workers measured by years of education and other proxy variables can not fully cover the comprehensive characteristics of workers,and workers’psychological traits and personality traits have a great impact on migration decision-making,but there are few relevant studies.The new human capital theory divides human ability into two categories:one is cognitive ability represented by IQ,logical thinking,memory and reasoning ability;The other type is the non-cognitive ability represented by personality characteristics,self-confidence,self-esteem and other characteristics.The influence of non-cognitive ability on workers’ migration decisions is still unclear.This paper partly draws on the research results of psychology to construct a specific index of non-cognitive ability,namely adaptive ability,and studies the reasons for labor decision making from the perspective of individual characteristics.As an important part of non-cognitive ability,adaptive ability includes,on the one hand,the important abilities of continuous learning and coping with uncertainty required by workers to improve their competitiveness in the labor market.On the other hand,adaptability is also closely related to workers’ tolerance to unfamiliar environments and social interactions.The research on the influence of adaptability on labor migration decision-making promotes the integration of new human capital theory and labor migration theory to a certain extent,enhances the understanding of labor migration decision-making,and provides reference for the introduction of human-centered urbanization plans,improving the happiness of labor migration,and improving the spatial utilization efficiency of human capital.Based on the data of China Household Tracking Survey(CFPS)in 2014,2016 and 2018,combined with the population migration theory,the new human capital theory and some psychological literature,an index reflecting the social adaptability of workers was constructed.The index are measured by four dimensions,including the learning ability,emotional stability,uncertainty stress,and creative power.The Logit model is used to identify the important influence of adaptability on the migration decision of workers.After the robustness test and endogeneity processing,the results are still valid.In the robustness test,the methods such as substitution of explained variables,entropy method constructing indexes and lag variables are used comprehensively.PSM test and instrumental variable method were used to eliminate possible endogeneity problems.The part of heterogeneity analysis identifies the differences between different industries,educational backgrounds and individual characteristics.In the part of mechanism analysis,three mechanisms of the influence of adaptability on labor migration decision are identified by means of cross-term regression and intermediary test.The conclusions of this paper are as follows:First,adaptability plays a positive role in promoting labor migration.Second,the way that adaptability affects migration is mainly through higher wage premium after migration,namely income effect,which indicates to improve the level of social capital and obtain the support of external resources to realize migration;in addition,reducing the psychological cost of migration and the resistance of migration decision.Third,among the individual characteristics of workers,marriage and gender will affect the mobility of workers through adaptability.Fourth,heterogeneity analysis illustrates that improving the adaptability of people with relative lower education in modern service industry will have positive infect on the mobility of overall labor force.Thus,the main suggestions are as follows:firstly,education system should pay more attention to non-cognitive abilities.Secondly,people-oriented urbanization should be carried out to pay attention to workers’ demands and enhance humanistic care for workers.