Research on the Rationality of Property Rights, Income Expectation, and the Willingness of Agricultural Transfer Population to Withdraw from Homesteads: Evidence from Hefei, China

This study aims to explore the formation mechanism of homestead withdrawal decisions among the agricultural transfer population from the perspective of the rationality cognition of property rights. Based on 1775 valid questionnaires collected from the agricultural transfer population in Hefei, Anhui Province, China, this study constructs a binary Probit model to examine the impacts of the rationality cognition of ownership and the rationality cognition of inheritance on the willingness to withdraw from homesteads with compensation, and employs the stepwise regression method and the KHB decomposition method to test the mediation effect of income expectation on the relationship between the rationality cognition of property rights and the willingness to withdraw from homesteads with compensation. The following results indicate: (1) both the rationality cognition of ownership and the rationality cognition of inheritance exert significant positive effects on withdrawal from homesteads among the agricultural transfer population; (2) the impact of rational property rights exhibits significant heterogeneity across gender, age, share of non-agricultural income, and migration regions; (3) income expectation plays a mediating role in the relationship between the rationality cognition of property rights and the willingness to withdraw from homesteads. In conclusion, we should deepen publicity and education on homestead ownership, and build a market-oriented and diversified compensation mechanism for homestead withdrawal to enhance the rational cognition of homestead property rights and income expectation of ATP (Agricultural transfer population).