The purpose of this study is to quantify the relationship between fragmentized collective forestland,
farmers investment and forest commodity output to examine the rationality of collective forest right reform
after dispersed forestland operation. The data is based on the 2420 farmers’ survey data in nine provinces
of China including Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Henan, Shandong and Liaoning.
The results show that if S index is used, fragmentized forestland reaches 0.41 and can be ordered (from high
to low) as Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Liaoning, Sichuan, Fujian, Guangxi and Shandong. Under certain
fragmentized intervals (forestland fragmentized ratio lower than 0.22 or higher than 0.51), the higher the
forestland fragmentized, the lower the farmers investment. The investment-output model indicates that
forest block reflects the negative impacts to forest output while other variables such as labor, tangible inputs
and forestland have positive impacts. When bamboo is produced, level of fragmentation has negative impacts
on forestland acreage and significant positive impacts on labor used. The study implies that after the land
is divided to households, physical investment is the key factor to affect the commodity output and should
be considered by the related policies to increase the incentives of farmers. Based on this study, we provide
some information and guidance on policy of farmers’ forestland operation in large scale
Keywords
collective forest rights reform, fragmentized forestland, farmers’ investment, forest commodity output