Contracted Land Assets and Rural Labor Transfer: Unlocking the Potential for Sustainable Urbanization Through Total Income of Agricultural Products

Rural labor transfer is crucial for China’s urbanization and agricultural modernization, yet the role of contracted land assets in this process remains underexplored. Understanding how land tenure arrangements affect labor mobility decisions has significant implications for rural development policy. This paper investigates the impact of rural contracted land assets on rural labor transfer and its underlying mechanisms, with particular attention to the moderated mediating effect of total income from agricultural products. Using data from the 2015 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) and employing mediation and moderated mediation analyses, we examine rural households across China’s eastern, central, and western regions. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) Whether at the household or individual level, contracted land assets significantly reduce the transfer of rural labor, and this conclusion still holds true after robustness testing and overcoming endogeneity issues. (2) The impact of contracted land assets on rural households in the eastern region is greater than that on rural households in the central and western regions, and the impact on rural households closer to cities is greater than that on rural households far away from cities. (3) The area of contracted land transferred in and the total income of agricultural products play a mediating role, while whether the contracted land is transferred out and whether it is close to the city plays a moderating role. These findings offer important insights for developing countries, suggesting that facilitating land transfer mechanisms and improving agricultural income are essential for sustainable rural development and labor mobility.