**1. Introduction**

Land, as a factor of production, has a production function, as it provides jobs and income for producers. In rural areas, the economic activities basically revolve around the relationship between land and labor. This is particularly true in traditional "rural China" society, which is based on agriculture and living on land; therefore, rural labor "sticks" to land [1]. In order to meet household subsistence needs and secure economic income, rural labor is engaged in agricultural production, which is behaviorally reflected in the dependence of rural labor on the land. However, with the development of the market economy in rural areas, land has come to serve multiple other functions, such as security and property functionalities [2]. This is also the case in the process of China's structural transformation, as the functional orientation of land, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the land production function of farmland, change with these new developments. This in turn loosens the relationship between labor and land, thereby altering the "stickiness" of land [3]. According to the labor value theory, agricultural labor participation is the

**Citation:** Sun, X.; Zhu, W.; Chen, A.; Yang, G. Land Certificated Program and Farmland "Stickiness" of Rural Labor: Based on the Perspective of Land Production Function. *Land* **2022**, *11*, 1469. https://doi.org/10.3390/ land11091469

Academic Editor: Yongsheng Wang

Received: 18 July 2022 Accepted: 30 August 2022 Published: 2 September 2022

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enacted form of land production function. Specifically, as land is an indispensable resource in agricultural production, the utilization of land production function and the realization of economic value must be condensed in human labor. Therefore, as land "stickiness" refers to the dependence of rural labor on land, the production function of land determines the "stickiness" between farmland and rural labor, in turn, the land "stickiness" is expressed by the degree of agricultural labor participation.

Since the China's reformation and opening up to the world, under the influence of the land system and the urban–rural dual system, the function of land in China's rural areas has changed, the production function has gradually decreased, and the land "stickiness" of rural labor has gradually weakened. In order to track these new developments, this paper constructs an analytical framework that analyses the weakening of land "stickiness" (Figure 1). China's current rural land system adheres to collective ownership, which is an internal member's right, and grants all members of the village equal rights to enjoy the village's land [4]. Therefore, in order to achieve equity in land ownership, regular and irregular adjustments according to changes in household size are necessary [5]. Regular adjustments refer to land reallocation at the end of the contract period. In 1983, landuse rights were allocated to the households in a village for a period of 15 years each. In 1998, the contract period of land-use rights was increased from 15 to 30 years. In 2008, the land contract period was further increased from 30 years to an unspecified "longterm" period. In 2017, farmers' land-use right contracts were extended by yet another 30 years upon expiration. Irregular adjustments, meanwhile, refer to land reallocation due to population changes. Using egalitarian principles, the size of land assigned to a household was determined by the number of household members and/or labors [6]. This led to frequent land reallocations within villages to correct for demographic changes that occurred within the contract period. For example, Brandt et al. [7] found that land was reallocated 1.7 times on average per village from 1982 to 1995. Meanwhile, Ren et al. [8] found that 33% of the villages experienced land reallocation after the 1998 land contracting round. These adjustments brought instability to land property rights, which in turn led to the inefficient allocation of land and labor and a reduction in agricultural returns [9,10]. These decreases in land production function weakened land "stickiness" and decreased agricultural labor participation. At the same time, due to the influence of the urban–rural dual system, the non-permanent transfer of "leaving the countryside without leaving the land" has become the main rural–urban pattern in China. [11]. However, migrating laborers still retain rural land or rent out land to relatives and acquaintances [12]. As land's main function has transitioned to that of security, agricultural production efficiency has remained low, the "stickiness" of the land has weakened, and the agricultural labor participation rate has decreased. The corresponding low agricultural labor participation has brought a series of problems between urban and rural areas, such as an increase in urban–rural income disparity, rural poverty, and rural recession [13].

**Figure 1.** Analytical framework for land "stickiness".

Through the above analysis, it can be found that the external manifestation of the weakening of land "stickiness" is the low degree of agricultural labor participation; the internal motivation is the instability of land rights and the weakening of land production functions caused by the land system and urban–rural dual system.

Therefore, in order to increase the participation of agricultural labor, it is urgent to stabilize rural land property rights, improve farmers' agricultural production expectations, strengthen land production function, and enhance land "stickiness".

In order to stabilize rural land property rights, the Chinese central government has twice implemented the Land Certificated Program (LCP), first in 2003 and then in 2009. The aim of the LCP is to guarantee land property security and provide a legal definition of contractual management rights [14]. In 2003, the government initially implemented the LCP through the Rural Land Contracting Law. This initial program, which lasted through 2007, was called the first round of the LCP. The first round was applicable to over 94.6% of all rural households [15]. However, the LCP implementation during this period was sketchy, with unclear land information on plot size and boundaries [16]. In 2009, the Chinese central government began the new round of the LCP, which was called the latest national LCP. This time, all households with land in a village were required to participate. The implementation of the latest round of the LCP was divided into three stages. The first stage was known as the small-scale village-level pilot stage. Beginning in 2009, small-scale village-level pilot work for the LCP was carried out in eight provinces and municipalities under the direct supervision of the central government. The second stage involved nationwide piloting at the county level. This stage of LCP piloting began in 1 to 3 counties (cities and districts) that displayed strong representation in each province. In all, the process, which took place in March 2011, involved a total of 12,150 villages in 710 townships across 50 counties (cities and districts). In the third and final stage a province-wide pilot phase was implemented. The province-wide piloting started in the three provinces of Shandong, Anhui, and Sichuan, while 27 whole-country pilots were carried out in 2014. Nine additional provinces were added as whole-province pilot units in 2015, and the whole-county pilots were expanded in other places. By 2017, the LCP had been extended to cover almost the whole country. In November 2020, the registration and certification of contracted rural land was basically completed, as the certification rate exceeded 96%. The most important role of this program was to establish clearly registered ownership rights, contract rights, and operational rights, confirm that rural households had the right to the possession, use, mortgage, and benefit of their respective contract land, and validate that the rural household could transfer these property rights to others in legitimate ways. According to the requirement of central government, the process of the latest LCP mainly included public mobilization, land survey, results announcement, signature confirmation, and issuing of certification [17]. The goals of the latest LCP in 2009 were to (a) ensure that county governments could effectively solve the issues left over from history, including inaccurate contracted land size and unclear spatial location; (b) fundamentally guarantee governmental safeguarding of farmers' landmanagement rights and contract rights in the form of legally valid certificates in order to reduce farmers' worries of losing their land; and (c) clarify the transaction parties of land property rights through the LCP to optimize the rural land transaction market and reduce the land transaction cost [18].

The latest national Land Certificated Program (LCP) stabilized the contracting relationship, clarified the land property rights, and strengthened the integrity of land rights by providing land contractual management rights certificates. Therefore, the aims of this study are twofold. The first is to investigate the effect of LCP on land "stickiness" through theoretical analysis and empirical tests. The second aim is to explore how the LCP affects the land "stickiness" of rural labor based on the perspective of land production function.

#### **2. Literature Review**

Existing academic research on the policy effect of LCP has mainly focused on the development of the agricultural industry and the livelihood of farmers. First, in terms of the agricultural industry, the LCP affects the input of land, labor, investment, and technology, which in turn promotes the improvement of agricultural production efficiency and the development of agriculture [14,16,19–22]. Second, in terms of farmers' livelihoods, the LCP has changed farmers' choices of livelihood strategies and narrowed the gap in welfare levels among farmers [23–25].

Thus, as agricultural labor participation is the external manifestation of land "stickiness", this paper focuses on the factors involved in rural labor and discusses the impact of the LCP on rural labor participation.

There have been many studies on the LCP and labor participation, and their views can be roughly divided into three different categories. First, the LCP promotes non-agricultural labor participation or rural out-migration [26–28]. As the LCP clarifies land property rights, reduces the risk of land loss for farmers, and accelerates land transfer, it thereby promotes the transfer of rural idle labor to non-agricultural industries. Second, the LCP reduces the expected losses caused by the adjustment of farmland and stimulates the enthusiasm of farmers to invest in agricultural production, thereby inhibiting the transfer of rural labor to off-farm employment [29]. Specifically, the irregular adjustment of farmland is akin to levying random taxes on farmers [30], which means that in the unforeseen future, farmers' land and medium- and long-term investments attached to the land will inevitably suffer losses. The more frequent the adjustment, the greater the expected loss of farmers. On the contrary, the stability created for farmland by the LCP will reduce the random taxes levied against farmers and reduce their expected losses. This should in turn enhance their enthusiasm for engaging in agricultural production, and reducing the transfer of labor to off-farm employment. Third, the LCP has no significant impact on the non-agricultural labor participation of the rural labor because the off-farm employment of rural labor is closely related to labor's human capital, local social conditions, and other factors [31].

By reviewing the existing literature, we found that: First, there is no consensus among scholars on the impact of the LCP on rural labor. Second, most of the existing studies focus on the impact of the LCP on rural labor off-farm employment or rural out-migration, while the literature on the policy effect of LCP determination on agricultural labor participation is relatively lacking. Due to the heterogeneity of the endowment of rural labor, not all rural labor will realize the transfer from agricultural to non-agricultural work. On the one hand, farmers have formed high asset specificity in long-term agricultural production, such as agricultural machinery and technology. In order to avoid economic losses after abandoning agricultural production, these farmers will be encouraged to continue engaging in agricultural production after experiencing the stability brought by the LCP. On the other hand, due to the constraints of human capital, some rural labor can only stay in the agricultural field [32]. In addition, the LCP mainly promotes the off-farm employment of rural idle labor groups [33]. Therefore, it is particularly important to evaluate the policy effect of the LCP on the participation of agricultural labor. Thirdly, the heterogeneity of the policy effect of the LCP among different rural household types and different farm sizes also requires further analysis. With the development of agricultural modernization, rural household types are beginning to diversify as the co-existence of professional and non-professional households becomes more common. Meanwhile, the market of farmland transfer is constantly developing, and this results in changes in farm size. This begs the question, does the relationship between the LCP and land "stickiness" change due to differences in rural household types and changes in farm size? That is, does the policy effect of the LCP have preferences in terms of household types and farm size? Without further research into this question, it will continue to be difficult to fully estimate the policy effect of the LCP on the land "stickiness" of rural labor.

To fill these knowledge gaps, we address three main questions through empirical research: (1) Does the LCP enhance or weaken the land "stickiness" of rural labor? (2) Can it be applied equally among the different rural household types and the different farm sizes? (3) How does the LCP and land production function affect land "stickiness"?

The answers to the above questions have important theoretical value and practical significance. The results of this research could serve to protect farmers' rights, promote the development of agricultural production, improve the level of agricultural modernization, and achieve the goal of rural revitalization in China.

Hence, based on the perspective of land production function, this paper firstly constructs the conceptual framework of "LCP–land production function–land 'stickiness'" to theoretically analyze the mechanism of the property rights exclusion effect and the incentive effect of LCP on the land "stickiness" of rural labor via land production function. Secondly, using mixed cross-sectional data from the 2016 and 2018 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), the propensity score matching (PSM) model is used to empirically test the effect of LCP on land "stickiness". Heterogeneity analysis and robustness tests are also conducted. Furthermore, we introduce a mediation effect model to test the mechanism of the effect of the LCP on the land "stickiness" of rural labor. Finally, we propose policy recommendations to provide references for stabilizing the property rights of farmland, enhancing its production functions, and promoting agricultural development.

#### **3. Theoretical Framework**
