The Impact of New Agricultural Management Entities’ Participation on the Transfer Price of Contracted Land Management Rights: Evidence from Northeast China

The significant transformation of agricultural production and operation models has reshaped the supply-demand structure of rural land, providing growth opportunities for new agricultural management entities characterized by large-scale operation. Their large-scale land demand has directly driven an upward trend in the transfer prices of contracted land management rights. By analyzing this practical phenomenon, this study explores the intrinsic logic behind the rising transfer prices of contracted land management rights under the participation of new agricultural management entities, aiming to provide references for further regulating the formation mechanism of transfer prices and promoting the healthy development of the land transfer market. Based on the sample survey data of farmers from the Songnen Plain and Sanjiang Plain in Northeast China, this study adopts the cluster-robust Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model and moderating effect model for analysis. The results show that the participation of new agricultural management entities exerts a positive impact on the transfer price of contracted land management rights; the impact of new agricultural management entities’ participation on the transfer price is positively moderated by agricultural production efficiency; and the impact also presents heterogeneity across different villages and land parcels. Compared with remote villages and paddy parcels, the participation of new agricultural management entities has a more significant impact on the transfer price of contracted land management rights in township-adjacent villages and dryland parcels. Therefore, to reasonably standardize the transfer price of contracted land management rights, efforts should focus on further strengthening policy guidance to standardize the participation mechanism of new agricultural management entities, regulating the transfer market to establish a dynamic monitoring mechanism for transfer prices, and strengthening the training and guidance for new agricultural management entities to connect and drive farmers so as to improve the agricultural production efficiency of individual farmers.