Professor Runqiu Liu of SCU’s School of Public Administration has recently published in Habitat International an academic paper entitled “Farmer Differentiation, Generational Differences and Farmers’ Behaviors to Withdraw from Rural Homesteads: Evidence from Chengdu, China”. This paper is the research results of the National Social Science Fund Project "Performance Evaluation and Path Optimization of Homestead Withdrawal in Typical Pilot Areas" (Project No.: 17BJY091) led by Professor Runqiu Liu. The first author of this article is Runqiu Liu, a professor of Land Economics and Land Management at the School of Public Administration. The second author is Chao Yu, a doctoral student.

Habitat International was founded by the UN-Habitat in Vancouver in 1976. As a research forum of the UN- Habitat, Habitat International mainly focuses on the urbanization in developing countries, such as urban and rural human settlements and their planning, design, production and management. In the JCR category, it is one of the leading international journals in the fields of "Development Studies" (3 / 41), "Urban Studies" (4 / 42) and “Regional & Urban Planning” (5 / 39).

“--- Against the background of farmer differentiation and generational differences, based on field survey data from 1909 farmers in Chengdu, this study analyzed the impacts of farmer differentiation and generational differences on farmers' behaviors to withdraw from rural homesteads with the combined application of the binary probit model and the ivprobit model. The results indicated that 18.07% of farmers in the survey area had withdrawn from rural homesteads. Higher degrees of farmer differentiation inhibited farmers' behaviors to withdraw from rural homesteads. Compared with the first generation farmers, the new generation farmers were more inclined to hold onto rural homesteads, indicating that the most qualified farmers were more likely to choose not to withdraw from rural homesteads. Moreover, generational differences moderated the association between farmer differentiation and farmers' behaviors to withdraw. From a perspective of policy-making, land administrators and policy-makers should realize that farmer differentiation and generational differences are important factors affecting farmers' behaviors to withdraw, and therefore need to be fully considered in WRH policy-making. From a theoretical perspective, it was found that estimating the impacts of farmer differentiation and generational differences on farmers’ behaviors to withdraw from rural homesteads without considering measurement errors and endogenous problems would likely lead to an underestimation of the true impacts.” (Abstract)

Article Link：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2020.102231