Assessment of farmer willingness to exit rural homestead based on farmer land property rights:An empirical analysis of Songjiang and Jinshan Districts in Shanghai

The management and circulation policy of rural homestead are not only a big concern to the interests of farmers, but also a vital issue related to rural social stability and national economic development. Under the current policy concerning the integration of urban and rural regions and the most practical concern of the vast majority of farmers is whether they can truly enjoy the right of transfer of their homesteads. The local homestead exiting pilot program for saving construction land space was designed to enhance land use efficiency, but still could infringe on land ownership of farmers. From the perspective of household property right function, this paper analyzed the farmers' willingness of homestead withdrawals. By using relevant survey data on Songjiang District, Jinshan District of Shanghai, we established a regression model of Logistic with 29 indicators as based variables, and quantitatively analyzed farmers' willingness to exit homestead under the condition that farmers enjoyed collective land property rights. The results showed that:1) farmers clearly understood their homestead rights with a strong will to exit. Farmers were concerned about whether their expectations and perceived welfare of homestead exiting could be met. Farmers had strong will to use their homesteads for commercial development, which could lead to better economic compensation. 2) The premise for active voluntary homestead exiting was that farmers enjoyed main residential land use rights, security and property rights, had a very clear understanding of homestead rights, and had strong protection consciousness of self-interests so long farmer right/interest safeguards were not damaged. 3) In Shanghai and other eco-nomically developed areas, farmers had a clear understanding of homestead ownership, functions and powers and had higher willingness to quit if there were effective guarantees. Therefore, in the practice of farmer homestead exiting, it was important to explore a systemic establishment where farmer homestead rights were more complete with well-protected reasonable expectations and compensa-tion standards of homestead exiting. Such a systemic establishment could help guide the orderly exit of farmer homesteads.