Are Rural People With Land in Their Homes More Reluctant to Become Urbanites? A Study From Chinese Data

China’s urbanization demonstrates an imbalance whereby population urbanization lags behind land urbanization. This indicates that urban areas are increasing, while many rural people are hesitant to seek urban hukou and settle in the city permanently. Instead, they temporarily work there and returning to their rural homes during important holidays. According to some analysts, this is the result of migrant workers’ reluctance to cede control of the land in their native communities. Therefore, we wonder if the rural population who own land at home are less likely to move into cities. With the willingness of rural household registration population to urbanize as the dependent variable and land resource endowment of rural household registration population as the independent variable, this study empirically explores the impact of land resource endowment on the willingness of rural household population to urbanize based on data from 2017 China Mobile Population Dynamics Survey (CMDS) Volume A by logit regression analysis. The results found that land resource endowment significantly affected the rural population’s willingness to urbanize. In particular, there was a 4.49% lower likelihood of moving to the city among the rural household registration population with contracted land than among the rural household registration population without contracted land. In comparison to the rural household registration population without homestead land, there was a 9.2% reduced likelihood that those with homestead land would be willing to relocate their family to the city.