1. Introduction
Rural–urban migration has been playing an important role in economic development in China and many other developing countries worldwide [
1,
2]. Over the past four decades, the household responsibility system and progress in agricultural technology has greatly promoted the growth in agricultural productivity, which further leads to a sharp increase in surplus rural labour force in rural China [
3,
4,
5]. Meanwhile, the impressive expansion of urban sectors has formed a huge labour demand, resulting in the migration of a large number of farmers to urban areas to participate in off-farm work with a relatively higher wage [
2,
6,
7]. In 2018, there were more than 280 million farmers moving off farms in China [
8]. Note that the massive migration of farmers from rural to urban areas aggravates the aging of the agricultural labour force, which raises the problem of who farms the land in the future [
9,
10,
11,
12].
The majority of farmers migrating to urban areas have to return to their hometown due to the rigid constraint of the dual household registration system (known as
hukou) and other factors [
2,
13]. Many studies show that the presence of the dual household registration system constitutes a barrier to those farmers settling in urban areas [
1,
14,
15]. After a period of off-farm work in urban areas, farmers migrating to urban areas have to return to their hometown as they get older or their health status becomes poorer.
Meanwhile, a considerable number of return migrants attempt to start their own business in their hometown upon return with the help of physical and human capital accumulated during the migration period [
1,
16,
17]. For example, a survey conducted in 2009 found that 43% of 1019 return migrants in Hubei had a willingness to start a business in their hometown when they returned to their hometown in the future [
18]. Similarly, about 65% of the 1145 return migrants surveyed between 2009 and 2010 in Jiangxi also had the willingness to start a business upon return [
19]. Using data of the Chinese Household Income Project Survey (CHIPS), Zhou et al. [
20] found that rural–urban migration experience increased return migrants’ likelihood of starting a business by 1.8%. However, Wang and Yang [
21] conducted an econometric analysis using a survey dataset of 600 return migrants and 2561 non-migrants in China, and concluded that rural–urban migration experience exerted significantly positive effect on farmers’ participation in the wage-employed work, and was negatively associated with farmers’ self-employment.
A few studies analyse return migrants’ participation in agricultural production in recent years. A survey conducted in Sichuan found that nearly half of 309 return migrants aged above 40 years old had no option but to engage in agricultural production [
22]. Using survey data from the Research Center for Rural Economy of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China, a study indicated that about 31.4% of 799 migrant farmers born in 1980s and 1990s showed willingness to return to their hometown to engage in agricultural production [
9]. Gong [
23] also found that 28.6% of 1642 migrant farmers aged between 16 and 33 years old had the willingness to become occupational farmers upon return. Several studies further investigate the effect of the rural–urban migration experience on farmers’ agricultural production [
19,
24,
25]. Using survey data of 1300 farmers in Hubei, for example, Shi and Wang [
26] found that the accumulated time of rural–urban migration exerted a significantly positive effect on farmers’ adoption of new agricultural technologies upon return. Qian et al. [
27] employed a Heckman selection model to account for the sample selection bias and pointed out that return migrants could provide financial and human capital to promote specialized agricultural production.
The small-scale farmers dominate agricultural production in China. For example, Huang and Ding [
28] indicated that China has about 40% of the small-scale farmers in the world. Note that small-scale farming is closely associated with the overuse of agrochemicals [
29], low productivity and efficiency [
30], and poor risk-resistant capability [
31]. In recent years, the land use policies implemented by the Chinese government aimed to increase the size of arable land managed by individual farmers in a moderate way and promote the appropriately large-scale arable land use [
32]. For example, the government separated the ownership, contracting the right and management right of arable land to promote land transfer and appropriately large-scale land use. In such a context, which role do return migrants play in promoting the appropriately large-scale arable land use becomes a crucial issue that needs further study. In particular, it is of great importance to investigate whether rural–urban migration experience increases farmers’ arable land use. However, the relevant empirical evidence is rare.
The motivation of this study is to investigate the effect of rural–urban migration experience on arable land use for Chinese farmers from both the theoretical and empirical perspectives. Compared with previous studies, the contributions of this study are twofold. First, previous studies have attached attention to the relationship between rural–urban migration experience and several aspects of agricultural production [
19,
24,
25,
26,
27]. However, little is known about how rural–urban migration experience affects arable land use among farmers. This study fills this gap by investigating the effect of rural–urban migration experience on arable land use in China. Second, the self-selectivity issue of rural–urban migration experience has been ignored in previous studies, which would lead to a biased econometric estimation. In comparison, this study addresses this issue using the treatment effects model. Taking these two aspects into account, we use a random survey dataset covering 2293 farmers in seven Chinese provinces for analysis, and employ the treatment effects model to account for the potential self-selectivity of rural–urban migration experience. In fact, rural–urban migration and return migration are not unique phenomena in China; they are also popular worldwide, especially in many developing countries [
33,
34,
35,
36,
37]. It should be noted that when the advantages of physical strength and ability to participate in off-farm work gradually vanish as they become older, return migrants in rural areas would have to return to agriculture accordingly. While this study is conducted in the context of China, it also has important academic and policy implications for farmers’ rural–urban migration and return migration as well as their effects on land use in other developing countries.
We organize the remainder of this study as follows.
Section 2 discusses the mechanism by which rural–urban migration experience affects farmers’ arable land use.
Section 3 introduces the econometric technique for empirical analysis. In
Section 4, we introduce the procedure of sampling, variable and data description.
Section 5 reports the empirical results with robustness tests. The final section concludes the study with important implications for policies related to land use in China.
2. Theoretical Analysis
This part analyses the mechanism by which rural–urban migration experience affects farmers’ arable land use. Rural–urban migration experience would affect farmers’ arable land use through reducing capital constraint, improving entrepreneurship, and altering technology endowment [
38,
39,
40,
41].
First, rural–urban migration experience would increase arable land use through softening farmers’ capital constraint. In China and many other developing countries, the undeveloped rural financial system forms a rigid capital constraint for farmers who are willing to manage arable land. Previous evidence demonstrates that the rural–urban migration experience could effectively raise the household income of farmers migrating to urban areas [
42,
43,
44]. In China, for example, off-farm wage was the largest source of the growth of per capita rural income during the period 2014–2018, accounting for more than 40% of the growth [
45]. In this context, the rural–urban migration experience may be conducive to increasing the likelihood that farmers manage larger arable land from this perspective.
Second, rural–urban migration experience could promote the development of farmers’ entrepreneurial consciousness, which may also increase their likelihood of increasing arable land use. On the one hand, previous studies point out that the rural–urban migration experience results in the accumulation of human and social capital in addition to the increase in physical capital [
1,
46]. On the other hand, return migrants may be more likely to obtain a modern business and management philosophy [
47]. Both these effects of rural–urban migration could help farmers to develop their entrepreneurial consciousness [
1,
46]. It is reasonable to assume that enhanced entrepreneurial consciousness would lead farmers to invest more in agriculture, such as increasing the size of arable land.
Third, the rural–urban migration experience would alter farmers’ technology endowment with regard to agricultural production, which would further affect their decisions on arable land use. Overall, the rural–urban migration experience may exert both positive and negative effects on farmers’ technology endowment with regard to agricultural production. First, due to a long-term absence from agricultural production, return migrants may lack farming experience and knowledge of traditional technologies to some extent [
24,
25]. Second, however, previous evidence also shows that the rural–urban migration experience could lead farmers to adopt new technologies with regard to agricultural production [
26]. In such a context, whether rural–urban migration experience exerts a positive or negative effect on farmers’ technology level is not explicit, and thus, the effect of rural–urban migration experience on farmers’ arable land use remains ambiguous, altering their technology endowment.
Note that the effect of the rural–urban migration experience on arable land use may differ by farmers’ age group and location. On the one hand, rural–urban migration experience would exert largely different effects on arable land use through affecting the aforementioned three factors for farmers in different age groups. For the aging and young farmers with rural–urban migration experience, the former would have stronger entrepreneurial consciousness [
17]. Moreover, young farmers may be more likely to adopt new technologies in contrast to aging farmers when both have rural–urban migration experience [
48,
49]. On the other hand, there are obvious differences in geographical characteristics and cropping structures in different regions. In contrast to producing grain crops, for example, the profit margin of producing cash crops is much larger, which would provide more incentive for farmers to increase arable land use.
6. Conclusions
Return migrants have been playing an increasingly important role in agricultural production in China. This study explores the effect of the rural–urban migration experience on farmers’ arable land use theoretically and empirically. Data used in this study come from a cross-section survey of 2293 Chinese farmers conducted in 2016. We employ the treatment effects model to account for the self-selectivity of rural–urban migration experience.
The results provide robust evidence that rural–urban migration experience significantly increases farmers’ arable land use by more than 20%. While rural–urban migration experience exerts significantly positive effect on arable land use for farmers aged below 65 years old, it does not have a positive relationship with arable land use for farmers aged 65 years old and above. In addition, the effect of rural–urban migration experience on arable land use also differ across provinces.
Based on the aforementioned findings, we discuss several important implications for policies related to land use in China. To summarize, it is important to take measures to encourage return migrants to rent arable land, and enhance credit support and subsidy policies to promote arable land use for return migrants, improve social agricultural services to reinforce training in agricultural technology and skills for return migrants, implement locally suitable land use policies aiming to promote appropriately large-scale farming, as well as develop advanced agricultural technologies to promote the productivity of arable land use.