Analysis on the Willingness of Peasant Households for Forestland Use Right Transfer in the Background of Collective Forest Tenure Reform: A Case Study in Guangyuan City in Sichuan Province

The objective of this study is to get a better understanding and accurate information regarding factors affecting the forestland transfer, providing first-hand information, and proposing policy implications. The forestland use transfer is the main content in the collective forest tenure reform in China at present. Individual household, as a basic unit of forest production, should be the major participant in the forestland transfer. Using survey data of 329 rural household in 18 villages of three counties, this paper analyzes influencing factors on rural householders’ willingness to partake in forestland use right transfer by employing Binary Logit Regression. Nineteen variables, which were identified as characteristics of householders and households, natural endowment of forestland resources and householders’s awareness of forestland policy. Results indicate that householders’ awareness of pertinent policies and population of the household demonstrate significantly positive effects, while forestland area owned by individual household shows a markedly negative effect on peasants’ willingness to participate in forestland transfer. Some policy implications are discussed in this paper.