Social Capital, Policy Satisfaction and Farmers' Contract Signing Behavior in "Shift of Village to Residence"

As an important reform measure in the process of urbanization, "Shift of Village to Residence" aims to promote the transformation of administrative villages into neighborhood committees, which is initially implemented in economically developed areas such as Beijing. Existing research focuses more on its macroeconomic impact and lacks a micro analysis from the perspective of farm households’ participation. Based on the data of 416 sample farm households in Shigezhuang area of Beijing, we empirically examined the impacts and influential mechanism of social capital on the contract signing behavior of farm households using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that: Social capital has a significantly positive effect on farmers' contract signing behavior, in which social network has the largest effect, followed by social participation, and social trust in the last place. This positive impact comes from the direct effect of social capital on contract signing behavior, and also indirectly promotes contract signing behavior through the mediating variable of policy satisfaction. The innovation of the present paper lies in the construction of a theoretical analysis framework that covers three dimensions: social capital of farmers, policy satisfaction, and actual participation behavior, which enables a more comprehensive understanding of the behavioral logic and decision-making mechanism of farmers in the process of "Shift of Village to Residence".