Uncovering Land Value Capture: Stakeholders’ relationships and perceptions within China’s rural land marketization reform

Abstract

Since land marketization reform triggers a significant change in land value, Land Value Capture among directly involved stakeholders - local governments, land sellers (rural collectives and rural households), and land buyers - attracts widespread attention. Understanding stakeholders’ Land Value Capture in land marketization reform is crucial towards land institutional arrangements, local governments’ revenue, rural revitalization, rural households’ livelihoods and just development, and land buyers’ profits. However, stakeholders relations and perceptions of Land Value Capture in land marketization reform have been extensively debated in the existing body of literature. This thesis attempts to address the main research question: how do the directly involved stakeholders interact and perceive Land Value Capture changes caused by land marketization reform in terms of institutional setting, stakeholder characteristics, time, and space? After comparing the public and private dominant regimes worldwide, our empirical evidence is taken from the latest institutional rural land marketization reform in China. Under the overarching institutional approach, we used different methodological frameworks such as power, interest, justice, and cost for this analysis. The findings indicate that: 1) stakeholders face dilemmas of Land Value Capture in land marketization reform. 2) Local governments hold positive perceptions of Land Value Capture despite their economic loses, because the social and political considerations are more dominant than the economic ones in their interest-balancing acts. 3) Rural collectives are optimistic about their future trends and actively construct the rural land stock cooperation system for Land Value Capture since they focus on long-term interest rather than short-term interest. 4) Rural households are satisfied with land marketization reform concerning procedural justice and the land value distribution over different stakeholders, yet they are critical about their absolute gains and the comparison between rural and urban land values. 5) Despite the low historical costs, the higher future costs significantly impede land buyers to invest in rural land. These shed new light on ongoing debates concerning local governments’ interest-balancing acts, the future trend of collectives, the livelihoods and impoverishments of rural households, and the dilemmas of land buyers in land investments.