Does the Collective Forestland Tenure Reform Promote Rural Households’ Forestry Inputs? Based on Dual Perspectives of Rural Households’ Divergence and Inter-Generational Differences

Abstract

As the most direct subject of collective forestland tenure reform, rural households’ forestry production behavior is an important guarantee for the promotion of sustainable forestry development. Based on the survey data of 12,760 rural households in 9 provinces in China, we construct a theoretical analysis framework of the impact of collective forestland tenure reform on rural households’ forestry inputs from the perspective of rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences, and elucidate the mechanism of the effect of collective forestland tenure reform on rural households’ forestry inputs in the context of rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences. The results of the empirical analysis show that collective forestland tenure reform significantly increases rural households’ forestry inputs; this effect has a differentiated impact on rural households with different degrees of differentiation and inter-generational differences. Although the collective forestland tenure reform provides a good institutional environment for households to increase the enthusiasm of forestry inputs, the positive incentive effect of collective forestland tenure reform tends to decline as the degree of households’ differentiation and inter-generational differences deepen. Therefore, this research tries to provide an “indirect” policy adjustment idea to deepen the policies related to collective forestland tenure reform by starting from the differentiation of households and inter-generational differences.