1. Introduction
Since the reform and opening up, China’s dual economic structure of urban and rural areas has partially been overcome by the rapid progress of urbanization, industrialization, and agricultural modernization. As a result, many rural households have relocated from rural to urban areas in search of employment, with the proportion of the labor employed in rural areas falling from 75.31% in 1978 to 43.60% in 2017. Since the 1980s, China’s collective forestland tenure reform has experienced more than 40 years. The entire exploration process of the comprehensive reform is most representative of the “three definitions” of forestry reform in the 1980s and the new round of collective forestland tenure reform in 2003. From the 1950s to the 1970s, China’s collective forests were mainly operated and benefited from a form of collective “common property tenure”, under which rural households could not hold the tenure to collective forestland exclusively, which eventually led to serious damage to collective forestland at that time. The problems of forest cultivation are becoming more and more prominent. The existence of these problems not only severely restricted the supply of timber and forest products in China at that time, leading to the contradiction between supply and demand of timber and forest products, but also brought about the degradation of forest conditions and caused serious ecological and environmental problems. Therefore, reforming the tenure relationship of collective forestland and improving the condition of collective forestland became a realistic problem that the government urgently needed to solve at that time. In 1981, the Chinese government issued a decision on several issues concerning the protection of forests and the development of forestry, which put forward the forestry “three definitions” reform policy of “stabilizing the forest tenure of mountain forests, delineating the reserved mountains and determining the responsibility system for forestry production”.
Due to the lack of clarity in the definition of tenures in the forestry “three definitions” policy, some collective forest areas have the phenomenon of merging the responsible mountain and the reserved mountain, and even many collective forests have many unowned mountains, one mountain with multiple owners and other problems of an unclear definition of tenures, making rural households over-harvest forest resources due to the lack of stable policy expectations, resulting in collective forest areas. As a result, the accumulation of collective forests has been declining again, forcing the central government to call a halt to the forestry “three definitions” reform. As China continued to promote the reform of the market economy system, the Chinese government issued the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development in 2003, marking the beginning of a new round of reform of the collective forestland tenure system, and in 2008, a new round of reform of the collective forestland tenure system was fully implemented nationwide. In accordance with the principles of the central government’s implementation of the collective forestland tenure reform, each region cannot simply take the responsibility of the forestry “three” reform period to determine the responsibility of the mountain and self-reserved mountain for the issuance of certificates, but to re-conduct field “four to” survey and registration, the issuance of a unified style, and has the legal effect of the new forestland tenure certificate.
However, influenced by factors such as resource endowment and initial status of tenure, the new round of collective forestland tenure reform has been implemented in different regions of the country with obvious differences, resulting in significant differences in the security of tenure, resulting in the current stage of forestry operation in rural areas still being sloppy and low efficiency, with family contract management as the main body of collective forestland management, long-standing lack of forestland investment and forestland productivity level. The problems of low productivity of forestland are becoming increasingly obvious. In 2016, the Chinese government issued the Opinions on Improving the Collective Forestland Tenure System, proposing to consolidate and expand the results of the new round of collective forestland tenure reform and further improve the registration and certification of collective forestland contracts, with a view to establishing a benign development mechanism that guarantees national ecological security, sustains the growth of forest resources, and stimulates rural households’ enthusiasm for forestry production. However, compared with the period of “three definitions” of forestry, although clear and stable tenure of forestland motivates rural households to engage in forestry production and operation, the environment of rural labor supply and production factor allocation structure faced by the deepening reform in the new period has changed greatly, and the trend of rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences has gradually deepened to become a prominent phenomenon in rural society. Nevertheless, compared to the forestry “three definitions” period, although clear and stable tenure of forestland motivates rural households to engage in forestry production and operation, the environment of rural labor supply and production factor allocation structure facing the deepening of reform in the new period has changed significantly, and the trend of rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences has become a prominent phenomenon.
On one hand, the proliferation of off-farm employment opportunities for rural households has led to a large amount of surplus rural labor migration to the off-farm sector and the increasing importance of off-farm employment income in total household income [
1], which has led to the differentiation of originally homogeneous households and numerous changes in forestry production behavior. On the other hand, there are significant differences between the old and new generations of rural households in terms of material and spiritual expectations, which may lead to gradual differences in their willingness and behavior in forestry management and their perceptions of off-farm employment. Based on this, it is important to understand the impact of forestry reform on the input of forestry production factors from the perspective of rural households’ differentiation and inter-generational differences. In addition, examining the effect of collective forestland tenure reform on forestry inputs from the rational qualities of rural households’ psycho-social level can provide valuable insights into collective forestland tenure reform’s precise operation. Academics in China have continuously paid attention to the impact of collective forestland tenure reform on rural households’ forestry inputs but have not yet formed a consistent opinion on the relationship between collective forestland tenure reform and rural households’ forestry inputs.
The research has continuously paid attention to the impact of collective forestland tenure reform on rural households’ forestry inputs, and the available results mainly analyze the impact of secure forestland property tenure on forestry investment from three major effects: security, transaction, and credit in China. First, the security effect. Most studies have found that collective forestland tenure reform makes tenure in forests more stable and reduces the number of disputes over forestland tenure [
2]. Long-term stable land tenure ensures that rural households’ land returns are not appropriated by the government or institutions [
3], reduces the uncertainty of future returns [
4], and stimulates investment by influencing the expected rewards of land [
5]. It also reduces the instability of rural households’ potential incomes and boosts their excitement for forest activities [
6]. Stable and comprehensive forestland tenure can raise rural households’ awareness of their tenure, thereby reducing long-term investment risks and boosting rural households’ output incentives [
7]. Insecure and ambiguous tenure significantly reduced household incentives to invest in forestland, resulting in inefficient forestland use [
8]. Yi et al. [
9] found that rural households’ security of tenure on forestland influences rural households’ forestry inputs on forestland; Liu et al. [
10] argued that collective forestland tenure reform has a positive effect on rural households’ participation in forestry operations, with households more inclined to operate forestland with secure tenure compared to unconfirmed plots. Second, the transaction effect. Forestland transactions had a statistically significant factor equalization effect, which could be used to correct the mismatched labor–land ratio and improve land-use efficiency [
11]. Frequent adjustment and expropriation of land increase rural households’ operating costs and transaction risks and affect rural households’ willingness to transfer land [
12].
Rural households can decide to lease or sell property in reaction to changes in the external economic environment, particularly changes in the demand and supply of forestland, in order to maximize their forestland tenure and increase the utility and advantages for their households [
13]. Secure land tenure can effectively influence rural households’ enthusiasm to operate and prompt tenure transactions through production, transaction costs, and transaction price effects [
14], i.e., the tenure incentive is achieved through the transaction route [
15]. One study discovered an investment incentive effect by comparing rural household forestry investments before and after the collective forestland tenure reform [
16]. In the short run, the principal reform of forestland tenure can increase rural households’ investment intensity [
17]. It can be seen that collective forestland tenure reform can effectively reduce the information cost due to transaction information asymmetry and promote the development of forestland tenure flow market, thus affecting the allocation structure of forestry production factors. Third, the credit effect. Secure and stable tenure make it possible for land to become collateral, and rural households obtain credit from the collateral value of land through the credit market and act on land investment [
18], i.e., land certificates that increase rural households’ access to credit become one of the factors of land tenure affecting investment [
19]. A study demonstrates the importance of home mortgage rights for forestland. Therefore, it is crucial for the government to promote the forestland mortgage market and raise rural households’ understanding of their tenure to use forestland as collateral for loans [
20].
Therefore, collective forestland tenure reform has substantially increased the possibility of rural households’ access to forest tenure mortgage loans through the forest tenure mortgage system, which can effectively alleviate the credit constraints faced by rural households in forestry production due to the lack of effective collateral [
10], thus improving the situation of liquid capital deficiency faced by rural households in forestry production. In summary, collective forestland tenure reform as an institutional arrangement of the forestland tenure system can effectively increase the area of forestland operated by rural households [
21], although it exacerbates the degree of fragmentation and decentralization of households’ forestland to a certain extent [
22]. However, clear tenure can motivate rural households to increase capital such as fertilizer and pesticides and labor input in forestry production [
23]. Both forestland use and disposal rights can boost forest output by promoting rural household investment and optimizing forestry labor [
24]. Therefore, forestland tenure is an important factor influencing rural households’ forestry capital and labor inputs [
10]. Some scholars also analyzed the impact of collective forestland tenure reform on forestry inputs from the perspective of rural households’ subjective evaluation. Xie et al. (2013) found that households’ subjective evaluation of the forestland allocation system and collective forestland tenure reform had a significant impact on rural households’ forestry operations, and the higher the households’ subjective evaluation, the higher the intensity of forestry inputs [
25]. However, studies with the opposite view have concluded that collective forestland tenure reform does not have a significant effect on rural households’ forestry inputs [
26]. For example, Yi et al. (2014) [
27] found that although collective forestland tenure reform enhanced the security of forestland tenure, it did not have a significant incentive effect on rural households’ forestry inputs, which may be due to the increase in forestland fragmentation. The imperfect development of the forestland lease market and mortgage market, and the liquidity constraint of rural households due to the difficulty of realizing trading rights and mortgage rights [
28], resulted in the inability to achieve a significant increase in forestry inputs [
29].
A large body of literature has analyzed the impact of collective forestland tenure reform on forestry inputs in terms of its direct or indirect effects. However, China has undergone significant and profound changes after more than 40 years of development, and an important characteristic difference is the differentiation of rural households due to the difference in the degree of off-farm employment that accompanies the difference in rural socioeconomic development and urbanization level. Off-farm work is an important source of income for many rural households in rural China. As a result, rural households with relatively high off-farm incomes are less motivated than rural households with relatively high forestry incomes to allocate labor to the forestry sector [
30]. Off-farm employment is an inevitable trend of employment form and employment structure change of rural labor in the context of current economic transformation. Therefore, the division of rural households caused by labor migration may reduce forestry production labor supply. In order to ensure normal forestry production and operation, it is inevitable to achieve perpetual investment in forestry production and operation by taking into account forestry production while off-farm employment, increasing capital to compensate for labor shortage, or using returned capital to continue to expand forestry inputs. Therefore, the differentiation of rural households may be a micro-explanation for the uneven efficiency of forestland use by rural households at this stage.
Another important characteristic differential impact is the difference between the first generation of rural households born before 1980 and the new generation of rural households born after 1980. There are huge differences between first-generation and new-generation rural households in terms of upbringing, life expectations, literacy level, value orientation, personal pursuits, and behavioral logic [
31]. Such inter-generational differences can directly or indirectly affect rural households’ employment choices. Wang Chunguang [
32] and Liu Chuanjiang et al. [
33] verified this difference, arguing that the purpose of off-farm employment for the first generation is to increase family income, while the new generation of rural households adds additional pursuits such as work environment to their wage income. Such inter-generational differences may cause rural households to have diversified attitudes toward forestry inputs. Therefore, it is necessary to answer the following questions. What is the effect of the deepening of rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences on rural households’ forestry inputs? Does forestry reform have the same effect on forestry inputs for different types of rural households and different generations of rural households? This question has not been explored in the literature. Therefore, this research answers this key question from the perspective of rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences, taking into account the characteristics of rural households’ forestland resource endowment, human capital, natural environmental factors, and market characteristics: What is the impact of collective forestland tenure reform on the forestry production input behavior of rural households with different degrees of differentiation and different generations?
The main marginal contribution of this study is that, in exploring the impact of collective forestland tenure reform on rural households’ forestry investment, this study mainly focuses on the impact of collective forestland tenure reform on rural households’ forestry investment behavior with different degrees of differentiation and different inter-generational differences. On this basis, it further investigates the impact of the interaction between collective forestland tenure reform and rural households’ differentiation and the interaction between collective forestland tenure reform and inter-generational differences on rural households’ forestry investment behavior. Existing studies mainly focus on the security intensity of forestland tenure [
34], forestland tenure structure [
10], rural households’ risk perception [
35], attitude towards forestland tenure [
25], and the optimal allocation effect of labor caused by forestland tenure reform [
29,
36,
37,
38,
39] to discuss the impact of forestland tenure reform on rural households’ forestry inputs. The common feature of these studies is that rural households are regarded as homogeneous groups. They have not strictly distinguished the heterogeneous differentiation of rural households caused by different economic development periods and the inter-generational differences caused by different age levels. Moreover, studies have never addressed the issue of the research mainly taking homogeneous households as the objective object, which is also the biggest difference between this study and the existing research.
3. Research Design
3.1. Data Sources
The data in this research come from the Economic Development Research Center of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration on Policy Issues Related to the Reform of China’s Collective Forestland Tenure System, which continuously monitored rural household survey data in 18 counties of 9 provinces nationwide using the stratified random sampling technique, taking into account the regional distribution, the level of socio-economic development, the status of forest resources and the reform of the collective forestland tenure system, and other factors.
Based on the principle of differences in the distribution of forest resources in China, Liaoning was selected as the representative province of the primary forest area in northeast China; Henan and Shandong as the representative provinces of the lesser forest area in China; Sichuan as the representative province of the natural forest area in southwest China; and Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Fujian as the representative provinces of the collective forest area in southern China. Each province was selected based on the differences in economic development levels. Economic development level of higher counties (cities, districts), such as Liaoning Benxi County, Henan Shihe District, Shandong Laizhou City, Sichuan Weiyuan County, Guangxi Pingguo City, Hunan Pingjiang County, Jiangxi Suichuan County, Zhejiang Deqing County, Fujian Sha County, and economic development level of lower counties (cities, districts), such as Liaoning Qingyuan County, Henan Maoyang County, Shandong Mengyin County, Sichuan Danling County, Guangxi Huanjiang County, Hunan Hongjiang City, Jiangxi Tonggu County, Suichang County, Zhejiang Province, and Shunchang County, Fujian Province, the selected study area includes 18 counties (cities) in 9 provinces (districts) in China.
These sample counties did not start collective forestland tenure reform at the same time, even if two sample counties in the same sample province started collective forestland tenure reform at the same time. Thus, each sample province and each sample county showed time variation in initiating reforms. Three townships were randomly selected in each sample county, three administrative villages were randomly selected in each township, and 15 sample rural households were randomly selected in each administrative village. The research team conducted long-term follow-up surveys on the same sample of rural households in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016; ensured the basic stability of the quantitative questionnaire and qualitative questionnaire research framework at the county, township, village, and rural household levels in the process of follow-up research; and excluded sample rural households with incomplete observations and inconsistent questionnaire information for the sake of comparability across periods. Following data collection, a final sample size of 1276 rural households was obtained, with each sample rural household having 10 observations (2003, 2007–2015). It should be noted that in 2003, the Chinese government issued the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development and took the lead in launching pilot projects in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Liaoning provinces; in 2007, these pilot provinces announced the completion of this reform one after another. Therefore, the research team chose two years, 2003 and 2007, to compare and dissect the changes in Chinese rural household forestry production inputs before and after the implementation of the new round of collective forestland tenure reform. Meanwhile, in 2007, the Chinese government issued the Circular on Further Strengthening and Standardizing the Administration of Forest Tenure Registration and Certification, which pointed out that the registration and certification of forestland tenure is the core work of promoting the new round of collective forestland tenure reform and liberating and developing forestry productivity. Based on the experience of implementing the new round of collective forestland tenure reform in the pilot provinces, in 2008, the Chinese government issued the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Reform of Collective Forestland Tenure System, and the reform of collective forestland tenure system was fully launched throughout the country; in 2009, except for Guangxi, which did not carry out the new round of collective forestland tenure reform, provinces such as Henan, Shandong, Hunan, Guangxi, and Sichuan all completed this work. This resulted in the formation of 1276 rural households in 18 counties (cities) of 9 provinces (districts) nationwide for a total of 10 years (2003, 2007–2015) of rural household survey data. Using the price index of rural production materials and the consumer price index of rural residents, the data for the relevant variables were converted to constant 1994 prices.
3.2. Variable Selection and Descriptive Statistics
Explanatory variable: The inputs of forestry production of rural households. It includes two indicators: average per mu forestry cash outlay and average per mu forestry labor input. Forestry cash outlay is the total amount of funds rural households spend on seedlings, pesticides, fertilizers, machinery, and hired labor in forestry production and operation, and the average mu forestry cash outlay is the ratio of forestry cash outlay and forestland area, the unit is Yuan/mu; forestry labor input is the labor time rural households invest in planting, fertilizing, pest control, and forest nurturing in forestry operation, the unit is human days, and the average mu forestry labor input is the ratio of forestry labor input and forestland area, the unit is human days. Average forestry labor input is the ratio of forestry labor input and forestland area, with man-days/mu as the unit of measure.
Core explanatory variable: Collective forestland tenure reform. The collective forestland tenure reform achieved the “allocation of forests to rural households” through the issuance of certificates and provided rural households with legal tenure. However, following the “three determinations” era of forestry, the forestlands originally given to rural households have not been fully recovered everywhere. Furthermore, as part of the task of collective forestland tenure reform, new forestland tenure certificates must be issued for confirmed forestlands, but there are still forestland tenure disputes in some areas, making the issuance of new forestland tenure certificates difficult. As a result, this paper uses the dummy variable of whether rural households have obtained forestland tenure certificates as the characterization variable of collective forestland tenure reform, assigning a value of 1 to have obtained and a value of 0 to not have obtained.
Grouping variables: Rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences. According to the previous section, this paper measures the degree of rural household differentiation by rural household occupational differentiation, classifying rural household occupational types into pure rural households, pluriactivity households, and off-farm households, and assigning values 1–3 as ordered dummy variables, with higher values implying higher off-farm employment, i.e., deeper rural household differentiation. Furthermore, the academic community generally considers 1980 to be the dividing line between the old and new generations of rural households [
44]. As a result, this paper uses the 1980 birth year as the boundary and creates a dummy variable to characterize inter-generational differences. If the rural household head was born before 1980, the inter-generational difference is 0; otherwise, it is 1.
Control variables. Considering other factors that may affect rural households’ forestry inputs, this research categorizes the control variables into five categories. Firstly, forestland characteristics variables, which involve the indicators of forestland area and the number of forestland plots. Secondly, rural household characteristics variables, which involve two indicators of rural household size and total rural household income. Thirdly, the variables of rural household head characteristics. These involve the indicators of age, gender, health status, years of education, and whether the head of the rural household is a cadre. Fourthly, the village level characteristics variables. The three indicators are related to whether the road is hardened, whether the village headquarters is in a mountainous area and the distance from the market. Fifthly, the market characteristics variables.
Table 1 displays the definition, assignment, and statistical description of the model’s primary variables.
Table 1 shows that rural households’ average forestry capital input intensity is 41.0535 yuan/mu and their average labor input intensity is 3.6609 man-days/mu, and the annual grouping shows that rural households’ willingness to invest in forestry production factors has increased. The average percentage of rural households with confirmed tenure is 61.62%. Is this the motivation for rural households’ increased willingness to invest in forestry production factors? According to the annual grouping, the rate of rural households’ forestland tenure determination increased significantly after the collective forestland tenure reform. The trend of rural household differentiation is clearly deepened by the annual grouping, and the trend of off-farm employment is clearly strengthened. Furthermore, inter-generational variables show that the aging trend of rural households is deepening and the quality of rural labor is significantly decreasing; does this constrain rural households’ willingness to invest in forestry operations? This must all be confirmed by the subsequent empirical model. The results of Wilcoxon rank sum test showed that most of the explanatory variables changed significantly before and after the collective forestland tenure reform, so it is appropriate to include them in the empirical model.
3.3. Empirical Test Model
Given the long growth cycle of forestry and the obvious time difference characteristics of factor inputs, which means that the observed value of rural households’ operating inputs in some years is zero, with obvious data truncation characteristics, this research adopts the Tobit model more commonly used for the problem of restricted explanatory variables in the baseline regression and subsequent analysis, with the specific settings as in Equation (1).
In Equation (1), represents the individual household head, represents the time variable, is the input of forestry production factors for rural households, is the input of forestry capital and forestry labor, is the collective forestland tenure reform, represents the transpose of the vector composed of control variables, is the annual fixed effect, and is the random disturbance term.
The interaction term between collective forestland tenure reform and rural household differentiation is introduced to be identified on the basis of Equation (1), and the specific model is set as Equation (2) to test the moderating effect of rural household differentiation on collective forestland tenure reform and rural household forestry inputs (2).
To test the moderating effect of inter-generational differences on collective forestland tenure reform and rural households’ forestry inputs, the interaction term between collective forestland tenure reform and inter-generational differences is introduced on the basis of Equation (1) for identification, and the specific model is set as Equation (3).
In Equations (2) and (3), the moderating variables and represent rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences, respectively; represents the interaction term between collective forestland tenure reform and rural household differentiation; represents the interaction term between collective forestland tenure reform and inter-generational differences, and the rest of variables and parameters are set as in Equation (1).
5. Conclusions and Policy Implications
Under the background of urbanization and population aging, this study focuses on the mechanism of collective forestland tenure reform on forestry inputs under the regulatory effects of rural households’ differentiation and inter-generational differences from the perspective of rural households’ differentiation and inter-generational differences.
The main conclusions are as follows:
In addition to looking at rural households’ forestry input behavior in the context of the market’s objective environment, this study also considers the subjective impact of income level differences on rural households’ market integration, which results in a variety of changes in rural households’ forestry input in response to the reform of forestland tenure. However, the differences in the objective market environment and the variations in family endowments under subjective ability demonstrate that the collective forestland tenure reform has a certain incentivizing effect on rural households’ investment in forestry production to varying degrees, but that this effect is clearly heterogeneous under various forestland dependences.
With the deepening of rural households’ differentiation, the promoting effect of collective forestland tenure reform on rural households’ input level of forestry production is gradually weakened, and the incentive effect of forestry inputs is more significant for different types of rural households who have experienced collective forestland tenure reform, especially for rural households with higher differentiation, they are more inclined to continue to hold forestland tenure rather than withdrawing from the option.
For different generations of rural households who have experienced the collective forestland tenure reform, the incentive effect of forestry inputs is more significant, but the new generation of rural households is less willing to invest in forestry production than the first generation of rural households. Inter-generational differences are the primary influencing factor for the difference in the level of input of forestry production, according to both the actual survey and the empirical tests.
It is worth mentioning that many rural households have relocated to cities due to the rapid urbanization and industrialization of society. The rural households class has clearly differentiated itself. While some rural households continue to work professionally or occasionally in the forestry industry, others are primarily employed in off-farm jobs. However, an obvious fact is that the proportion of pure rural households is gradually decreasing. The proportion of part-time rural households is gradually increasing and will become the mainstream type of rural households. At this time, rural households with a higher degree of differentiation, such as off-farm households, basically no longer rely on forestry production for their source of income. However, the continuous differentiation of rural households in the urbanization process does not improve the willingness of rural households to withdraw from the forestland contract right.
Contrarily, rural households with a higher degree of differentiation are more likely to keep the forestland and continue with the original forestry production and management mode. As a result, when rural households are faced with the option of leaving, they retain a strong attachment to the land, causing them to “leave the farm” but not “leave the land”, and “go to the city” but not “abandon the land”. The main reason is that for rural households with higher differentiation, the welfare improvement brought by the withdrawal of forestland contract tenure is limited, primarily due to the appreciation of urban land, causing them to have higher appreciation expectations for continuing to hold forestland contract right.
At the same time, the continuous improvement of forestland power makes it closer to the complete sense of tenure, and rural households’ access to cities with the land is not limited. The primary source of income for rural households with a low degree of differentiation, such as pure rural households, is forestry production and management. These rural households’ forestland management scale and forestry investment will gradually increase in the future. The main reason is that the comparative income of forestry production and management is relatively lower than that of off-farm employment. Giving full play to the advantages of moderate-scale management is the key to improving forestry operation income. If the operation scale of rural households with a low degree of differentiation does not expand, low forestry operation income will gradually reduce the input of forestry production, and even the abandonment or cessation of forestry operations. Thus, the different preferences of different classes of rural households for forestland tenure are important factors in the current solidification of human-land conflicts and distortion of human-land relations in rural areas.
Furthermore, it was discovered that collective forestland tenure reform had a significant incentive effect on the input of forestry production for both the first-generation and the new generation rural households after further examining the inter-generational structural differences of rural households. However, the first generation of rural households tended to engage in forestry production and management or local off-farm employment in reality. Their living habits, attitudes, and social networks are still deeply embedded in rural society; the new generation of rural households tends to go out for off-farm employment, which is largely embedded in the life, production mode, and concept preference of rural society. At the same time, they are unable to take full advantage of urban social security and public services. They are still barred and marginalized from employment, residence, and social and political participation, resulting in the dilemma of “double embedding”. Therefore, the traditional ties of the first generation of rural households can further increase the incentive effect of forestry reform. However, when the traditional ties of the countryside gradually weaken, the incentive effect of collective forestland tenure reform can play a partial buffer role to a certain extent, so as to resist the negative impact of the urban exclusion system and enable the new generation of rural households to maintain a certain level of forestry investment.
Based on the changes in rural households’ investment in forestry production due to rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences, as well as the actual investigation, the following recommendations are made on how to continuously promote the forestland tenure reform policy. First, deepen the reform of the collective forestland tenure system and vigorously promote the reform of the “separation of three rights” of forestland. In order to achieve large-scale forestry management, it is important to continue promoting the confirmation and certification of forestland tenure, improving the relevant supporting system guarantee, encouraging the development of the forestland, capital, and labor markets, encouraging heterogeneous rural households to reasonably allocate household production factor resources, and boosting the production zeal of small rural households who rely on forestry production. Different classes of rural households have different needs for the rural land system as a result of the gradual differentiation of the rural labor and the escalating degree of inter-generational differences. In order to achieve a diversified institutional supply and ensure structural alignment between institutional supply and institutional demand, the reform of the collective forestland tenure system must take into account the heterogeneous characteristics of rural households and continually adapt and innovate in response to changes in the actual situation.
Second, support rural households and the overall development of both urban and rural areas in order to achieve prosperity for all. For the deeply differentiated rural households, we should establish and improve the forestland transfer market and forestland exit mechanism, promote the effective flow of production factors among industries, vigorously develop rural off-farm industries, increase rural households’ non-agricultural employment opportunities, and improve rural households’ self-development ability and professionalization process. To increase the income level of small rural households with shallow differentiation, we should innovate the rural industrial development model, vigorously cultivate and develop new forestry management subjects such as forestry cooperatives, family forest farms, and forestry leading enterprises, and fully utilize the driving role of new forestry management subjects for small rural households. Additionally, we should fully utilize the financial advantages of sharply differentiating rural households, create a mechanism for industrial development among rural households with different backgrounds, and encourage the development of heterogeneous rural households as a whole.
Third, strengthen skills training and employment guidance for the new generation of rural households, and enrich the employment choices of the new generation of rural households. The government should strengthen guidance, innovate the cooperation mechanism between schools and the development of agriculture, rural areas, and rural households, establish a labor-oriented development or output mechanism, and cultivate the new generation of rural households into modern rural households with specialized and excellent skills. For the first generation of rural households, we should consider their own limitations and empirical forestry management characteristics, strengthen the publicity of forestry subsidies and forestry development policies, encourage rural households to develop diversified forestry management models, and provide them with financial and technical support.