Farmers’ Economic Status and Satisfaction with Homestead Withdrawal Policy: Expectation and Perceived Value

Abstract

The withdrawal of homesteads is an effective way to improve the efficiency of rural construction land use and is being piloted in many regions of China, but the mechanism influencing farmers’ satisfaction with the withdrawal policy is unclear. This paper aimed to investigate the relationships among farmers’ economic status (ES), policy expectation (PE), policy perceived value (PPV), and farmers’ satisfaction with homestead withdrawal policy (policy satisfaction; PS). The study examined the mediating effects of PE and PPV on the relationship between ES and PS. The data obtained from a questionnaire of 287 households in Jinhu County, Jiangsu Province, China. After surviving from reliability and validity tests, a structural equation modeling (SEM) with latent variables was specified and estimated using Mplus. From the study results, we found significant positive relationships between ES, PP, and PS, but significant negative relationships between ES, PE, PPV, and PS. Also, our research found PE and PPV as potential mediators on ES-PS relation. We propose recommendations from three aspects to improve farmers’ satisfaction with future implementations of the homestead withdrawal policy. Our results provided new insights into how to improve the performance of homestead withdrawal policy.