How Does Collective Operating Construction Land Marketization Affect Farmers’ Livelihood Resilience: Evidence from Rural China

Collective operating construction land marketization (COCLM) is a major institutional innovation in China’s land reform process. However, the impact of this reform on farmers’ livelihood resilience (FLR) remains underexplored. This study uses data from the 2020–2022 China Land Economic Survey (CLES) conducted in Jiangsu Province to construct an FLR index from three dimensions—buffer capacity, self-organization capacity, and learning capacity. It also incorporates the actual status of COCLM at the village level to examine the impact of COCLM on FLR and its underlying mechanisms. The results show the following: (1) COCLM significantly improves FLR, and this conclusion remains consistent after a series of robustness checks. (2) In terms of FLR dimensions, COCLM has significant positive effects on all three dimensions, but its effects on buffer capacity and learning capacity are more pronounced than those on self-organization capacity. (3) Mechanism analysis reveals that COCLM improves FLR mainly by increasing farmers’ property income and promoting household non-agricultural employment. (4) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of COCLM is more pronounced in southern and central Jiangsu, among high-income households, and in villages with higher governance levels. This study suggests that COCLM reform should be further deepened to steadily promote the sustained improvement of FLR, enable land value-added returns and non-agricultural employment opportunities to reach farmers more effectively, and pay greater attention to regional differences, income-group disparities, and differences in grassroots governance capacity, while promoting inclusive growth through COCLM. The above conclusions have some reference value for regions similar to Jiangsu, while their applicability in other regions with substantially different development conditions still requires further examination.