*4.3. Deficiencies and Suggestions for Improvement*

The construction of the comprehensive land consolidation project decision-making evaluation index system from the perspectives of farmers and social investors is a supplement to the current independent policy decision-making. However, there are still the following deficiencies: (1) This paper only considers the interests of farmers and social investors to establish a comprehensive land consolidation project decision-making evaluation index system. However, the comprehensive land consolidation also involves multiple stakeholders such as local governments and village collectives. In the future, a comprehensive land consolidation project decision-making evaluation index system coordinated by multiple stakeholders should be established. (2) In order to avoid possible problems in the decision-making stage of project approval, a dynamic adjustment mechanism for pilot projects of comprehensive land consolidation should be established in the future, removing from the pilot list those that have been established but are unable to be implemented or have poor results. Moreover, the municipal pilot projects with good implementation effects will be adjusted to provincial pilot projects to obtain the support of provincial financial funds.

#### **5. Conclusions**

From the perspectives of farmers and social investors, this paper builds a comprehensive land consolidation project decision-making evaluation index system and makes an empirical analysis by using the survey data of seven pilot projects of comprehensive land consolidation in Xianning, Hubei Province, in 2020. Finally, the following research conclusions were obtained:

There will be great differences in the evaluation results when the decision-making of comprehensive land consolidation pilot projects is carried out solely from the perspectives of farmers and social investors. The reason is that farmers and social investors have different interests and concerns. Farmers pay more attention to whether comprehensive land consolidation can improve their production and living conditions, promote industrial development, and increase income. Social investors pay more attention to whether comprehensive land consolidation can produce indicators transaction income and industrial operating income.

It is reasonable and feasible to establish a comprehensive land consolidation project decision-making evaluation system when considering the interests of farmers and social investors. Social investors are the main investors in the comprehensive land consolidation, and farmers are the ultimate beneficiaries of the comprehensive land consolidation. Both are the core stakeholders of the comprehensive land consolidation. The decision-making evaluation of the comprehensive land consolidation project should comprehensively consider the interests and demands of farmers and social investors to make the evaluation results more scientific and reasonable.

The limited government financial funds should be invested in the consolidation content that the farmers need very much and social investors are willing to invest in. There is a large demand for funds for the comprehensive land consolidation project, which requires not only government financial capital investment but also a large amount of social capital investment. Thus, in the early stage of the pilot work of comprehensive land consolidation, limited government financial funds should be invested in places where farmers are in great need of improvement and in which social investors are willing to invest. In this way, it can not only attract social capital to participate in the comprehensive land consolidation so as to solve the current imbalance between the supply and demand of funds for the comprehensive land consolidation but also truly enhance the sense of gain of the farmers in the comprehensive land consolidation project area and promote common prosperity.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, W.X. and G.Y.; methodology, W.X.; software, W.X.; validation, W.X. and G.Y.; formal analysis, W.X.; investigation, W.X.; resources, W.X.; data curation, W.X.; writing—original draft preparation, W.X.; writing—review and editing, W.X.; visualization, W.X. and G.Y.; supervision, G.Y.; project administration, G.Y.; funding acquisition, G.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 71904150, and the National Social Science Foundation of China, grant number 12BGL078.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **Appendix A**

**Table A1.** Overview of each application project in the study area.



**Table A2.** Survey of individual characteristics of interviewed farmers.

**Table A3.** Overview of social investors interviewed.



**Figure A1.** Basic information of the project area.
