Factors affecting farmers' satisfaction with contemporary China's land allocation policy - The Link Policy: Based on the empirical research of Ezhou

Since the launch of economic reform and openness policy in the late 1970s, Chinese cities have witnessed significant growth and sprawl, resulting in a large amount of farmland converted for urban construction. Given the need to both protect farmland and provide options for urban development, the central government proposed the Link Policy in 2005. Under this scheme, farmers are relocated into centralised communities by consolidating their original homestead into farmland, and enabling the transfer of land quotas for urban construction. The implementation of the Link Policy has restructured rural farming and lifestyles but studies on the Link Policy from a farmer's perspective are limited. This paper investigates farmers' satisfaction with the Link Policy and explores the underlying factors. Using Ezhou in Hubei Province as a case study, face-to-face interviews were undertaken with farmers in centralised communities to understand their satisfaction with the Link Policy. Interview data were coded and analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to identify the factors affecting farmers' satisfaction. The results show that farmer's willingness to participate, knowledge of the Link Policy, living conditions before resettlement, and the compensation for resettlement had significant influence on satisfaction with policy implementation. We suggest that meaningful consultation and improved communications between farmers and local governments are needed to enhance the social acceptability of policy outcomes. To minimize the social impacts of resettlement, urbanised villages would be prioritised in project implementation and a long-term supporting scheme should be offered by local government to assist farmers in their lifestyle transition.