Recently, Associate Professor Tian Xiaohui of the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of Renmin University of China (RUC) published an article titled “Grassland tenure reform and grassland quality in China” in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, one of the top international academic journals in the field of agricultural economics.
Tian Xiaohui’s main research fields include agricultural economics, forestry economics, agricultural environmental issues, and climate change economics. His research results published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Land Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Forest Policy and Economics, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Chinese Rural Economy, and other well-known domestic and foreign journals.
Other collaborators are Hou Lingling, Researcher at the School of Advanced Agricultural Science, Peking University, and Liu Pengfei, Associate Professor at the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, University of Rhode Island.
Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of land tenure reform on grassland quality in pastoral areas of China. Using nearly 40 years of remote sensing combined with survey data in the pastoral area of China, we find that the privatization of land use rights without physical (i.e., fences) or legal (i.e., certificates) protection has little impact on improving grassland quality measured by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The enhanced privatization of grassland use rights with physical or legal security significantly increases grassland quality. We show that after the privatization of land use rights with security protection, grassland quality experienced about a 3% increase. Our results suggest that switching to privatized use rights without security protection from previously cooperatively managed land may undermine the positive environmental effects of land tenure reform.
For more details, please refer to https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12357.
