Analysis of Land Use Behavior and Efficiency of Different Farm Household Types
不同兼业类型农户的土地利用行为和效率分析——基于经济发达地区的实证研究

This paper analyzes land use behavior and efficiency of different farm household types based on sample urvey data from a developed area in Jiangning District, Nanjing City. We used comparative analysis, single factor analysis and other methods of variance to analyze the land use behavior of farm households, and also analyzed land use efficiency using data envelopment analysis (DEA), which can include multiple input and output indexes, so as to avoid the inadequacy of using only one input and output index. Then we classified land use efficiency into two categories, pure technological efficiency and scale efficiency, to identify the factors causing differences in land use efficiency of farm households. Finally, we propose measures to improve the efficiency of farm households. The results suggest that the factor of whether farm households also participate in other businesses has an obvious effect on the choices of farm households related to land use behavior, as inputs, fertilization, and the degree and scale of land use of the three types of farm households were significantly different. Generally speaking, the inputs of capital, labor, fertilization, and the degree and scale of land use for mixed farm-business households (type I) were lower than exclusive farming households, and households with more than 50% of their income from non-farm business (type II) were lowest. The differences in land use behavior created diversity in land use efficiency. Based on the DEA efficiency, levels of efficiency improved for households with some non-farm income (type I), but was lowest for households with more than 50% non-farm income (type II), which indicates that some business activities can improve land use efficiency of farm households, but beyond a certain level participating in business can actually cause a decline in household efficiency. As for the structure of land use efficiency, the pure technological efficiency of the three types of farm households were all low, scale efficiency of pure farmer and households of farm-business I type were almost the same, and scale efficiency of the exclusive farming and farm-business type I households were all higher than that of the farm business type II households. Based on scale efficiency we can see that almost all farm households were in a phase of increasing returns to scale, which shows that the production scale is still quite small, which was one important reason why the efficiency level was also low. Improving the scale of land management is one way to improve the efficiency of farm households.