Social Capital and the Effectiveness of Land Use Policies : Evidence from Rural China

This paper investigates the relationship between the three forms of social capital, i.e., social norms, social network, and trust, on the effectiveness of land use policies. Both long-term and short-term policy outcomes are considered in the proposed analytical framework. Benefiting from a comprehensive household survey dataset from 17 provinces in China, we adopt multiple measurements for each of the social capital forms and policy outcomes in the empirical investigation. We use a specific land use policy (i.e., reform to confirm, register, and certify rural land rights) as a natural experiment to estimate the effect of social capital. By revealing the complex relationship between various forms of social capital and a wide range of policy outcome measurements, our empirical findings confirm the validity, reliability, and tractability of the proposed analytical framework. Policy implications are also derived regarding how to utilise social capital to improve the effectiveness of land use policies