Abstract The research on the influence of interest rate on peasant households' credit demand has always been concerned by the scholars at home and abroad. Theoretically speaking, interest rate as the price of borrowing and the measure of risk should have effect on peasant households' borrowing behaviors, but the conclusions drawn from related literature are different. Rural Land Contracting Mortgage Right Loan(RLCMRL) is one of China's rural financial reforms by increasing peasant households' financial collaterals to alleviate their capital requirements and to improve their investment on agriculture. The research on whether the interest rate affects peasant households' willingness to participate in the RLCMRL has two implications: on the one hand, it can explore the peasant households' sensitivity to interest rate; on the other hand it can provide reference for promoting RLCMRL in China. This paper used 1 091 survey data and adopted the ordered logistic regression model to test the impact on the peasant households' willingness to participate in the RLCMRL from the micro perspective. Compared with the existing research, this article distinguishes itself in the following aspects: (1)It has demonstrated the impact of interest rates on the willingness of peasant households' to participate in the RLCMRL. (2)It has broken the bottleneck of quantifying data sets of interest rates. (3)The samples are controlled in an exact manner which greatly improved the accuracy of the conclusion. The empirical results have showed the following conclusions: (1)Interest rate impacts positively on the peasant households' willingness to participate in the RLCMRL. Real interest rate influences negatively on their willingness, with the flexibility value of 0.09. Replacement rate positively affects their willingness, with the elasticity value of 0.038. (2)Interest rate has a stable influence on peasant households' willingness to participate in the RLCMRL regardless of their income group. (3)The high-income group of peasant households are more sensitive than the low-income groups. Regardless of the value of actual lending rate or replacement rate, the interest rate elasticity of high-income group is superior to that of the low-income group. As for the real interest rate, the elasticity of high income was 0.119, and that of the low-income group was 0.073. As for the replacement rate, the elasticity of high income was 0.079, and that of the low-income group was 0.022. (4)The peasant households' willingness to participate in the RLCMRL is also influenced by their educational level, their agricultural management acreage, and their knowledge and cognition of the RLCMRL. Namely, the higher level of education the farmer received, the larger acreages of agriculture the farmer will manage, the more cognition of the RLCMRL the peasant household will obtain, and the more prone the peasant household will be to participate in. It has been further proved that peasant households' economic behavior is rational, and the interest rate has different influences on different groups. Therefore, when formulating and implementing the mortgage policy, the local government can improve the peasant households' willingness to participate in RLCMRL by changing lending rates and putting other influential factors within control. Besides, it is suggested that the government should attach great importance to the influence of interest rate while advancing the implementation of the RLCMRL and promoting the marketization of interest rate; that financial institutions should increase agricultural credit products and enrich the peasant households' choices of borrowing loans; that the Local government should perfect the RLCMRL policy as soon as possible, and set up institutions for the property right transaction and let the contracted management of land mortgage play their role, with the aim to effectively increase the feasibility of peasant households' requirements of the RLCMRL.
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