非农就业能促进耕地保护吗?OACHSSCD

From the perspective of factor endowments,the significance of farmland lies in its scarcity as a fac-tor of agricultural production in China,whereas agricultural labor is relatively abundant compared to developed countries.The expansion of non-agricultural employment can reshape the rural labor allocation and agricultural pro-duction modes,safeguarding the interests of micro-level entities like farmers by increasing value-added per labor,thereby enhancing the effectiveness of cultivated land conservation.This paper analyzes the impact of non-agricul-tural employment on the protection of contracted farmland by farmers,based on China's mixed cross-sectional data from the China Land Economic Survey,while delving into the underlying mechanisms and heterogeneous effects. The results indicate that non-agricultural employment significantly promotes farmland protection.Mechanism a-nalysis reveals that non-agricultural employment primarily drives farmland protection through two pathways:agricul-tural outsourcing services and land transfers.In particular,the outsourcing of plowing and harvesting,where mech-anization dependency is high,shows more pronounced effects.Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the posi-tive effect of non-agricultural employment on farmland protection is more significant under conditions of larger oper-ational scales and better road accessibility to contracted land,with off-site non-agricultural employment exhibiting even stronger farmland protection benefits. Targeted policy implications are proposed:shifting agricultural factor allocation from household-based manual distribution to socialized service production modes;improving land transfer systems to enable non-agricultural em-ployment and cross-regional resource allocation;and transitioning from administrative control toward incentive-com-patible governance,thereby establishing a long-term,stable farmland protection system. The paper systematically examines the impact of non-agricultural employment on farmland protection and ex-plores the underlying mechanisms based on the data from the China Land Economic Survey.The potential contribu-tions are as follows.First,from the perspective of a"trinity"approach encompassing farmland quantity,quality,and ecology,it provides empirical evidence on how non-agricultural employment affects farmland quality and eco-logical conservation.Second,by integrating socialized services and land transfer into a unified analytical framework of non-agricultural employment and farmland protection,it thoroughly delineates the intrinsic mechanisms through which non-agricultural employment affects farmland protection via outsourcing services and land transfer.Third,it further analyzes the differential effects of these mechanisms under varying conditions,uncovering the efficacy of non-agricultural employment on farmland protection across different spatial employment distances,operational scales,and underlying endowments,thereby offering targeted references for farmland protection strategies.