社会资本可利用度及其影响因素研究——来自内蒙古农牧民的经验发现

Social Capital Availability: The Case of Farmers and Herdsmen from Inner Mongolia

已有研究表明,社会资本对居民福利具有重要影响,但居民对社会资本的利用程度如何这一重要问题尚未得到足够的重视。本文首次提出了社会资本可利用度概念,并基于农牧户视角构建了社会资本可利用度的测度体系,实际测算了农牧户社会资本可利用度并对其影响因素进行探讨。研究表明,不同生产方式的农牧户社会资本可利用度确实存在显著差异,民俗文化、中心城镇可达性和居住集聚性对农牧户社会资本可利用度具有重要影响。本文的研究对于深入理解社会资本的内涵及其作用机制具有重要意义。本文的发现还意味着在实施乡村振兴战略时,应高度关注提升居民个体的社会资本可利用度,以提高居民的生活满意度。

Summary:Since the 1990s,social capital,a very important non-market force that can improve residents life satisfaction and promote social and economic development,has become a hot topic in the field of regional social and economic development.Due to their different characteristics and constraints,individuals can acquire significantly different amounts of social capital from a social network.How,then,can these differences be measured,and what are the factors that influence them?Providing answers to these infrequently asked questions will both increase our understanding of social capital and improve residents life satisfaction.How residents extract social capital from a social network has a crucial impact on their welfare.To further explore differences in individuals access to social capital,including the degree of inequality and the processes used,we develop the concept of social capital availability:limited by their own conditions and collective environment,the degree of actors access to resources in social networks can be expressed as the ratio of the amount of social capital they can obtain through social networks to the total amount of social capital in the social networks.The larger the index of the availability of social capital,the greater the accessibility of social capital,and the more resources available.Our sample region is the Darhan Muminggan United Banner of Inner Mongolia.The Participatory Rural Appraisal(PRA)was used to administer a survey to farmers and herdsmen,and semi-structured interviews were conducted with key figures such as the party secretary of each village and the head of the agricultural animal husbandry cooperation organization.Of the 1377 questionnaires distributed,1213 were included in the final sample,giving an effective rate of 88.1%.Based on the survey data,we develop a formula for measuring the availability of social capital and uses the comprehensive index method to measure the availability of social capital to farmers and herdsmen with different production modes.Our results indicate that there are significant differences in the availability of social capital to farmers and herdsmen with different production modes.In addition,grassland,sloped terrain,and rainfall are selected as instrumental variables to analyze the factors that influence the availability of social capital including folk culture,residential agglomeration,and accessibility of central towns.The use of instrumental variables to control endogenous problems increases the effect of the availability of social capital.To ensure the reliability of the research results,two robustness tests are conducted:changing the definition of the production modes and changing the Tobit of the regression model.The results show that the conclusions are credible.The main conclusions that can be drawn from this study and our related policy suggestions are as follows.First,residents have access to very different degrees of social capital.The groups that use the most social capital,from highest to lowest,are the pure farming type,agro-pastoral type,pure grazing type,and non-farming and pastoral type.Second,folk culture,accessibility of central towns,and residential agglomeration have significant effects on the availability of social capital.Our study s contributions are as follows.First,we are pioneers in considering social capital availability,and we construct a theoretical framework and measurement index system for studying social capital availability.This addresses a gap in the field of social capital research.Second,using farmers and herdsmen in Inner Mongolia as an example,we measure the availability of social capital and find that residential agglomeration,accessibility of central towns,and folk culture are important reasons for variation in such availability.