The Effects of Migration on Collective Action in the Commons: Evidence from Rural China
The Effects of Migration on Collective Action in the Commons: Evidence from Rural China
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DOI：
10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.07.014
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发表时间：
2016-12
影响因子：
6.9
通讯作者：
Yahua Wang;Chunliang Chen;E. Araral
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Yahua Wang;Chunliang Chen;E. Araral
在过去的30年里，学者们研究了30多个因素对公地集体行动的影响，但对农村向城市迁移的影响知之甚少。我们以中国为例来研究这个问题，中国是世界上从农村向城市迁移规模最大的城市。利用OLS、LOGIT和PROBIT模型以及对18个省1,780户农户的调查数据，我们发现移民对集体灌溉控制在许多理论上相关的变量具有统计上显著的不利影响。移民对公地集体行动的影响可能受到文献中经常提到的一些因素的影响，包括领导力、社会资本、社区意识、经济异质性和对资源的依赖。我们推测，大规模的迁出在一定程度上解释了集体渠灌使用量大幅下降的原因，并加剧了自1980年代改革开始以来地下水灌溉量的大幅增加。这些发现对中国的公共治理具有重要的政策意义，因为大规模的农村向城市的移民将在未来十年继续下去。由于世界各地，特别是在发展中国家，农村向城市的移徙日益增多，调查结果也可以部分解释许多发展中国家农村基础设施、自然公共资源和生态系统状况恶化的原因。
Over the past three decades, scholars have studied the effects of more than three dozen factors on collective action in the commons but little is known about the effects of rural to urban migration. We examine this question with the case of China, which has the world’s most extensive levels of rural to urban migration. Using OLS, Logit and Probit models and data from a survey of 1,780 households from 18 provinces, we find that migration has a statistically significant adverse effect on collective irrigation controlling for a large number of theoretically relevant variables. The effects of migration on collective action in the commons are possibly mediated by a number of factors frequently identified in the literature, including leadership, social capital, sense of community, economic heterogeneity, and dependence on resources. We speculate that massive out migration partly explains the significant drop in the use of collective canal irrigation and exacerbated the significant increase in groundwater irrigation since the start of reforms in 1980s. These findings have important policy implications for commons governance in China given that massive rural to urban migration will continue in the next decade. Because of the increasing rural to urban migration worldwide especially in developing countries, the findings could also partly explain the deteriorating state of rural village infrastructure, natural common pool resources and ecological systems in many developing countries.