比较视角下退耕还林补偿的农村经济福利效应——基于陕西省79个退耕还林县的实证研究

The Economic Welfare Effect on Rural Areas of Grain to Green Project in Comparative Perspective: An Empirical Study Based on 79 Counties in Shaanxi Province

已有研究表明,退耕区农民收入水平稳步增长,但农民对补偿水平、收入和生活质量等方面的满意度普遍偏低。这严重挫伤了农民对退耕还林政策的热情,导致复耕、后续产业参与度不高和工程进展缓慢等问题,不利于建立生态补偿长效机制。为此,在比较视角下构建退耕农村地区的经济福利函数,用影响农户经济福利的比较因素造成的效用变化率度量福利损失,分析这种收入与满意度背离的内在机制,并以陕西省为例,采用二步聚类法和倾向得分匹配法等方法,实证测算退耕农村地区的福利损失。文中考虑的比较因素包括退耕区农村当前收入水平与过去的比较(习惯性比较)、退耕区农村与城市收入水平的比较(城乡比较)和退耕区农村与非退耕区农村收入水平的比较(乡乡比较)。结果表明,和非退耕区相比,退耕区农村收入水平普遍更低,城乡收入差距更大;习惯性比较促进福利改进,城乡比较和乡乡比较阻碍福利改进,并据此提出相应政策建议。

Research has shown that the Payment of Grain to Green Project （GTGP） steadily improved the income level of the involved farmers, however, the reported satisfaction from farmers is low on compensation level of the project, overall income and living standard of themselves. This deviation could motivate the involved farmer to withdraw from the project and restore the land back to cultivation, thus jeopardize the long term effect of the GTGP. To address this problem, we first formulated the economic welfare function for the GTGP areas with a comparative perspective. Then, the deviation between income improvement and reported satisfaction was analyzed by investing the change rate of the utility function. Finally, the formulated theoretical framework was tested on the data obtained from 79 counties in Shaanxi province. The comparison factors that have been taken into account include income comparison between rural and urban areas （R-U comparison）, GTGP areas and non-GTGP areas （R-R comparison）, present and past（habituation）. Our results shown that farmers in the GTGP area has less income and the income gap between rural and urban areas is larger as compared to the non-GTGP area. These results also suggest that R-U comparison and R-R comparison hinders the increase of economic welfare in GTGP counties.