Influencing factors of farmers' willingness to withdraw from rural homesteads: A survey in zhejiang, China

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the influencing factors on farmers' willingness of withdrawal from rural homesteads (WRH). Methods that included field surveys, factor analyses and case studies were used for this paper. The results show that farmers have a strong willingness to own the property on which their homesteads sit. There are deviations between homestead systems and execution. It is common that the area of a homestead exceeds the lawful standard, and one peasant family owns two or more homesteads. Peasant families have many concerns about WRH, which include: reduction of employment, lack of supporting social security, high expenditure of new houses, low compensation criteria for homesteads, decline in standard of living and inconvenience in agricultural production. Among all means of compensation, peasants prefer allocated residences, and they pay more attention to public service facilities and fundamental facilities. The authors argue that implementing employment and social security policies and setting up linkage mechanisms of WRH could help to smoothly push forward WRH.