Relationship between fragmentized collective forestland, farmers investment and forest commodity output: an analysis on nine provinces farmers survey data in China

The purpose of this study is to quantify the relationship between fragmentized collective forestland, farmers investment and forest commodity output to examine the rationality of collective forest right reform after dispersed forestland operation. The data is based on the 2420 farmers’ survey data in nine provinces of China including Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Henan, Shandong and Liaoning. The results show that if S index is used, fragmentized forestland reaches 0.41 and can be ordered (from high to low) as Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Liaoning, Sichuan, Fujian, Guangxi and Shandong. Under certain fragmentized intervals (forestland fragmentized ratio lower than 0.22 or higher than 0.51), the higher the forestland fragmentized, the lower the farmers investment. The investment-output model indicates that forest block reflects the negative impacts to forest output while other variables such as labor, tangible inputs and forestland have positive impacts. When bamboo is produced, level of fragmentation has negative impacts on forestland acreage and significant positive impacts on labor used. The study implies that after the land is divided to households, physical investment is the key factor to affect the commodity output and should be considered by the related policies to increase the incentives of farmers. Based on this study, we provide some information and guidance on policy of farmers’ forestland operation in large scale.