*3.2. Analysis of Changes in Farmers' Livelihood Capital under Different Land Transfer Modes* 3.2.1. Descriptive Analysis of the Impact of Different Land Transfer Modes on Farmers' Livelihood Capital

There are variations in the final land management impacts and the advantages that farmers receive from land transfers, as a result of the various methods of trading land management rights in different models and the various operators after the land transfer. Table 7 shows the before-and-after mean differences in farmers' capital for sustaining their livelihood under various land transfer strategies. The findings reveal that the double difference estimates of the total value of farmers' livelihood capital before and after land transfer in the four modes were 0.058, 0.071, 0.111, and 0.122, respectively. Based on these findings, it can be said that all four land transfers have a positive impact on farmers' livelihood capital, at least in part, or that they encourage the expansion of that capital.


**Table 7.** Within- and between-group differences in farmers' livelihood capital before and after land transfer in different modes.

3.2.2. Econometric Analysis of the Impact of Different Transfer Modes on the Livelihood Capital of Farmers

This study conducted econometric analysis by various methods on the effect of land transfer on farmers' livelihood capital, in order to confirm the aforementioned conclusion. Farmers that did not participate in land transfer around the community were considered the control group in this study, whereas farmers in villages that used one of four land transfer modalities were considered the experimental group. The net benefit of each mode on farmers' livelihood capital was calculated using Equations (6)–(12) and STATA 22.0, specifically with reference to Table 8. The outcomes can be seen in Table 9, which shows positive and significant DID values for individual, family, and collective land transfers on farmers' livelihood capital, with coefficients of 0.17, 0.183, and 0.2491, respectively. Among the models, the leaseback and re-contract mode and the land stock cooperative mode had higher DID values and a greater impact on farmers' capital for livelihood.


**Table 8.** Details of the grouping of the control and experimental groups in the difference-in-differences model.

**Table 9.** Regression results of different modes of land transfer on farmers' livelihood capital.


Robust standard errors in parentheses: \*\*\* *p* < 0.01.

This study evaluated the variations in impact on farmers' livelihood capital of the two land transfer mechanisms involving collective management, to further investigate the most suitable land transfer mode in the study region. Farmers who used the land shareholding cooperative method are referred to as control group D, whereas those who used the land-leaseback contracting style were considered experimental group C. The intra-group and component differences in the values of the two models' livelihood capital indices are shown in Table 10. The DID estimate value for experimental groups C and D was 0.048, as seen in Table 10, which is favorable and significant. This demonstrates that when land was transferred through the land leaseback contractual model, the improvement in farmers' livelihood capital, notably in financial capital and social capital, was more evident. This is mostly due to the fact that under the leaseback contracting mode, the "village collective + planting leadership firm" is primarily responsible for operating the property. They receive the land rented from the original farmers, design it uniformly, construct agricultural infrastructure, split the property after replanning, and lease it to farmers. This procedure may involve the whole agricultural supply chain, including the production and storage of agricultural goods as well as their distribution and sale. A high level of expertise and organization is required, which may support farmers' development while the process is being realized. As a result, farmers can gain more from this manner of land transfer since the operational scale is higher after the transfer. The DID value of human capital is negative, which means that the impact of the joint-stock cooperative

model is slightly greater than that of the leaseback contracting model on the human capital of farmers. This may be because the land-leaseback contracting model includes a higher degree of modern agricultural technology and a lower participation of ordinary labor in the land transfer. This finding is also supported by the regression results.


**Table 10.** Regression results of land transfer on farmers' livelihood capital for the joint-stock cooperative mode and the land leaseback and recontracting mode.

Robust standard errors in parentheses: \*\*\* *p* < 0.01, \*\* *p* < 0.05, \* *p* < 0.1.

#### 3.2.3. Robustness Test

The endogeneity issue in policy evaluation can be better addressed by the twofold difference method, but it must be founded on a number of key presumptions, requiring parallel trend tests and placebo testing [46,47]. In this regard, experiments pertaining to the identification hypothesis from various aspects were conducted in this study.

#### Parallel Trend Test

The 95 percent confidence interval before land transfer (pre 2, pre 1 in the Figure 3) contained 0, demonstrating that the trend of the change in farmers' livelihood capital was similar between the experimental and control groups before t. Parallel trend tests were conducted on the aforementioned four groups of experiments, respectively, to confirm the viability of the double difference method and the identifiability of the regression results.

**Figure 3.** Results of parallel trend testing for DID.

Non-Observed Factor Effects

Although other variables that may affect farmers' livelihood capital were controlled for, there remain unobserved variables such as farmers' individual decisions that can have a potential impact on the difference between the experimental and control groups of farmers before land transfer, thus affecting the robustness of the regression results. Therefore, this study took the approach of creating random variables to test whether there was an effect of omitted variables. STATA 16 software was used to calculate and generate random shocks of land transfer on the livelihood capital of specific farmers, and repeated 500 times. Under such a premise, the mean value of DID was estimated, and the results are shown in Figure 4, indicating the distribution of the 500 estimated DIDs. The values of the DIDs in the random process were concentrated around 0 and were significantly far from the estimated values of the real experiment, by which it can be induced that the other farm household characteristics observed for the regression results had almost no effect on the regression results, thus proving that the previous estimation results were robust.

#### **4. Discussion**

Land transfers give land to farmers who are better able to farm it, which on the one hand increases the productivity of arable land and the efficiency of land use, and on the other expands the career options of farmers, increases their income, and is an efficient way to support local agricultural and economic development. The market-oriented land transfer policy has had a positive impact on improving urban land use efficiency, according to Jiang et al. [48]. Peng et al. [3] discovered that the scale of land transfers had a U-shaped effect on food crops, and suggested that the Chinese government should promote land transfers to ensure food self-sufficiency. Farmers, who are land operators, should be encouraged to transfer their land. Similar to the conclusions of this paper, Wu et al. [49] and Ren et al. [50] found that land tenure adjustment would improve farmers' livelihood capital and significantly reduce farmers' livelihood vulnerability, based on the livelihood sustainability framework. A difference is that this paper refers to Zhang Shichao's study [42], considering the existence of transfer outliers. In an area complementary to this study, Yang et al. [34] investigated the characteristics of livelihood capital and land transfer within farmers' livelihood strategies, and considered the influence of livelihood capital on land transfer. Together, their findings demonstrated a mutual relationship between land transfer and farmers' livelihood capital, further demonstrating that the two topics cannot be studied independently.

Different land transfer models have been implemented due to variations in types of land, economic conditions, and human cultures found in different regions. Each region selects the land transfer model based on the conditions found there, which is advantageous for the success of land transfer and makes it easier to raise standards of living for farmers.

Ref. [51], Zhang [52], Wang [53], and others have studied differences in the impact of the new business model and the government-led model on farmers' livelihood capital. Similar to existing studies, this paper has compared the two collective operation models again in order to confirm which is most appropriate for Manas County. The results show that the model with the village collective or a leading plantation company as the main operating agent is more effective in raising the standard of living for farm households. The land leaseback and re-contracting model, with village collectives or major plantation companies as the main operators, had the greatest impact on the livelihood capital of farmers in Manas County according to this paper's comparison of the two collective management models to confirm the most appropriate land transfer model for the area. The study's findings can serve as a guide for encouraging land transfer in Manas County. In future land transfers, farmers should be encouraged to pool land with scattered plots and lower yields, and they should be asked to promote this model in entire villages, because village collectives and top plantation companies have greater strengths in terms of land cultivation experience, national policies, and economic resources.

In conclusion, even though this study has included new ideas and enhanced previous research, there remain areas that merit further investigation. Since this study did not take into account livelihood strategies, the relationship of mutual influence between land transfer, livelihood strategy, and livelihood capital should be further delineated in the future. The existence of transfer-in and transfer-out behaviors within the process of land transfer indicates differences in farmers' choices for livelihood strategies.

#### **5. Conclusions**

The following findings can be drawn through field surveys, in-depth interviews, and the data analysis in this paper:


of land leaseback and re-contract were found to enhance effectively the method of land transfer for farmers' livelihood capital.

According to the survey of Manas County, the area now has sporadic land transfers, single employment of farmers who have been relocated, and ineffective land transfer security measures. On the basis of the findings of this investigation, the following recommendations are made:


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

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Shihezi University High-level Talents Research Start Project (Project Number: RCZK2018C41 and RCZK2018C22), key areas of science and technology research program projects (Project Number: 2021AB021), Shihezi University's innovative development special project "Study on the New Urbanization Development Model and Path Selection of the Southern Xinjiang Corps" (Project Numbers: CXFZSK202105), and Shihezi University Youth Innovation and Cultivation Talent Program Project "Study on the Estimated Appropriate Ecological Water Requirement of Aibi Lake Wetland in Xinjiang" (Project Numbers: KX00300302).

**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.

#### **References**

