Does religious social capital affect farmland transactions? A spatial autoregressive analysis in Taiwan

Abstract

This study aims to empirically determine whether social capital affects farmland transactions in Taiwan. It uses a geographic information system to link the village-level data of the largest national farmland survey with the village-level data of religious groups, which are the most widely distributed civil society organizations. The combined data are analyzed using a spatial self-retrogression model. After controlling for farmland spatial adjacency, an increase in social capital brought an increase in the percentage of active leased farmland and a drop in the percentage of fallow farmland. Analysis of the 2015 cross-sectional data revealed that social capital was strongly conducive to the efficient allocation of farmland resources. While belong to irrigation associations can help to allocate farmland resources (as expected), this allocation is more greatly facilitated by the combination of religion and other traditions. Social capital in Taiwan helped to reduce the density of abandoned farmland, especially Daoist temples in religious communities. This study also used panel data to examine changes in within-village farmland tenancy rates. This analysis found that the identified effects of social capital may decline over time.