Policy implications and impact of household registration system on peasants’ willingness to return rural residential lands: Evidence from household survey in rural China

Abstract

Despite a growing body of literature on China’s household registration system and rural land transfer, few studies have examined the impact of the household registration system on peasants’ willingness to return rural residential land. This paper aims to fill this gap and uses household survey data to measure the impacts of household registration system on peasants’ willingness to return rural residential land. The results show that the household registration system reduced the farmers’ enthusiasm to exit the rural residential land, that is, household registration system had a significant negative impact on farmers’ willingness to return rural residential land.