The Role of Rural Household Behavior in Economic Development of Less Developed Rural Area: a Case Study of Western Henan Mountainous and Hilly Region, China
欠发达农区经济发展中的农户行为 以豫西山地丘陵区为例

A survey was conducted in 1995 and 2000 among 332 rural households purposively selected from 10 counties and county-level cities in western Henan mountainous and hilly region. Analysis on the data brings out several important findings in the relationship between household behavior and regional development. The negative side of household behavior was deeply related to farmer's embededness in traditional agricultural society and the long lasting of isolated inland culture. (1) The information of production, technology and marketing in agriculture, horticulture, stockbreeding and other family business, was narrowly limited. (2) The income of household dominantly relied on physical conditions and natural resources. (3) The surplus labor, existing at large amount, was difficult in transferring to other economic sectors, largely because farmers were reluctant to leave their land for other non-agricultural business or for working in town and village enterprises. (4) Farmers were not active in seeking bank loans and did not feel comfortable in borrowing money for business. Most of their loans were for urgent home needs, such as paying hospital bills and building houses. (5) The increase of house income was expected to be used in improving their family living conditions, instead of developing family business. The quantitative modeling analysis further indicates the variation of impact on household income by production factors among living environment of mountains, hills and river basins. The households with different ratios of commercial production -- wholly self consuming, partly for market, and mostly for market -- played rather different roles in regional economic development. In the conclusion part, the suggestions on development strategies in the study region are proposed. Finally, a new approach is applied to discussion on the roles of households so that regional economic development in less developed rural region can be further studied.