The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in farmland rent prices between land transferors and different transferees when considering the quality supervision cost of the transferred farmland. Moreover, the impact of the intervention of township governments, village committees, and other intermediary organizations on the rent price differences is also taken into consideration. The treatment effect model (TEM) and grouping regression model were used. The results showed that: (1) Owing to the different transaction costs, when leasing to village transferees, the land rent was significantly lower than when leasing to non-village transferees. (2) With the intervention of intermediary organizations, such as township governments and village committees, the constraints of the reputation mechanism between acquaintances were weakened, and the cost of information identification when land transferors searched for out-of-town transferees was reduced. As a result, the differences in land rent when transferring to the village and non-village transferees were narrowed. This study presents a different view to explain the transaction characteristics of the rural land transfer market in China. Further, it is of paramount importance to implement an effective public intervention, including strengthening the intermediary role of township governments and village committees, which is conducive to improving the rural land transfer market of most developing countries, including China.

This study examines the spillover effects of China’s New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) implemented in 2009 as a cash transfer program for agricultural production. Based on the data collected by the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) in four periods (2011, 2013, 2015 and 2018), we employ Seemingly Unrelated Regression to explore how China’s NRPS affects agricultural production. Our findings show that NRPS pensions reduce household operating areas by 1.99 mu and agricultural investment by 1150 yuan, while increasing the labor time of their own agricultural production by 168 h, and farmers in the payment period have a similar impact. This finding is still reliable after a series of robustness tests. Gender heterogeneity analysis indicates that male participation in NRPS is more likely to reduce the actual operating area and increase the labor input of the family, while female participation in NRPS is more likely to reduce the agricultural capital input of the family. Moreover, the in-depth study of agricultural performance shows that the implementation of NRPS helps increase the average output value per mu by 700 yuan and technical efficiency by 0.2%, although this is at the cost of declining labor productivity. This study links the joint decision-making of agricultural production factor inputs with pension schemes and contributes to the development of relevant research, which may provide policy implications for how cash transfer schemes affect agricultural production and agricultural performance in other countries.

In many countries, along with rising rural labor transfer, the problem of rural domestic sewage discharge is becoming increasingly serious due to labor shortages in the villages. It is urgent to solve the environment pollution and health problems of residents which is caused by the massive discharge of domestic sewage in rural areas. Based on the survey data collected from Nanjing Agricultural University in 2020, this paper employs the ordered probit model and the CMP method, to empirically test the impact of non-agricultural employment and regional choice on farmers’ domestic sewage discharge behavior and the moderating effect of environmental cognition and the social network. The results show that: (1) There is a significantly positive correlation between non-agricultural employment and farmers’ sewage treatment behavior. (2) Environmental cognition significantly improves the participation of urban non-agricultural employment farmers in sewage treatment, and the social network has a significant role in promoting the adoption of sewage treatment behavior of local non-agricultural employment farmers. (3) Further heterogeneity analysis results show that the inhibitory effect of urban non-agricultural employment on random sewage discharge is more pronounced than that of local non-agricultural employment. Therefore, in order to effectively solve the problem of rural domestic sewage discharge, it is necessary to actively guide the sewage discharge behavior of non-agricultural employment households, strengthen the social network interaction within the village, and increase the publicity for sewage discharge knowledge.

The marketization of transfer rent is an important symbol of the development of the farmland factor market. At present, the price formation mechanism of rent in China’s farmland market is not perfect. Based on the theoretical analysis starting with the post transaction cost of leasers, this paper uses 1648 farmland transfer samples collected by the China Land Economic Survey (CLES) in 2020, and employs OLS, 2SLS and CMP methods to empirically test the impact of relationship governance on transfer rent and the role of third-party (including county and township governments and village committees) intervention on the change in relationship governance pattern and rent decisions. The results show that the close relationship between the two sides of transfer represents the strong relationship governance functioned by the constraints of the trust and reputation mechanism, which can reduce the post transaction cost. Additionally, the two sides play a game on this part of the transaction cost, making the transfer rent lower than the market price. Furthermore, the involvement of third parties such as county and township governments and village committees in the transfer has replaced the role of relationship governance in reducing transaction cost, and changed the relationship governance pattern of acquaintance society, which makes the transfer rent close to the market price.

At present, there are a large number of free farmland transfer without monetary or physical rents in rural China. It is relatively worthwhile to verify whether the transferees who transfer in farmland for free, the actual operators of farmland, would adopt the conservation tillage technology, which is crucial in protecting farmland quality and improving agricultural production efficiency. Based on the data of 527 plots surveyed by China Land Economic Survey (CLES) in Jiangsu Province in 2020, this paper employs Negative Binomial Regression (NBR), Poisson Regression with Endogenous Treatment Effects (ETPR) and Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR). Results show that: (1) Compared with the transferees who transfer into farmland with compensation, the free transfer is not conducive to the transferees’ adoption of five CTTs such as straw mechanical returning, soil testing and formulated fertilization. Specifically, the total number of technology adoptions by transferees who transfer in farmland without compensation is decreased by 1.977. The result is still robust after replacing the dependent variable. (2) Further heterogeneity analysis results of different types of technologies show that the number of labor-saving CTTs such as straw mechanical returning adopted by the transferees of free transfer decreases by 0.231, and the number of labor-intensive tillage technologies such as soil testing and formulated fertilization decreases by 2.496. Thus, free transfer has a stronger inhibitory effect on the transferees’ adoption of labor-intensive CTTs. Therefore, for the most developing countries including China, the governments should continue to improve the farmland factor market oriented by price mechanism and implement targeted conservation tillage technology according to the different degree of transfer marketization in different places.