Fair benefit distribution in forestland transfer with social capital participation in China: An improved Shapley value approach

Collective forestland, which has both economic and ecological value, is increasingly attracting the attention of social capital. However, under large-scale operations driven by forestland transfer, the challenge of unequal benefit distribution undermines the sustainability of these initiatives, and current research pays insufficient academic attention to the fairness of distribution. To establish a more equitable approach, we applied a cooperative game framework based on an improved Shapley value to redesign the benefit-sharing mechanism. Unlike the traditional Shapley value model, which assumes equal investment and risk sharing among participants, the improved model incorporates stakeholders' relative contributions and risk tolerance levels to optimize the benefit-sharing mechanism between forest enterprises and households. Using to an empirical case study in Taian City, China, our approach demonstrates the outcomes of alliance formation and income distribution. The findings reveal that a fair distribution scheme based on the Shapley value significantly increases forest households' incomes while enhancing operational efficiency in large-scale forest management. Our results identify several practical issues in current forestland transfer policies that require urgent attention, and propose a replicable institutional model for the redistribution of benefits in collective forest property rights reforms, offering operational solutions for enhancing fairness.