王征兵博客

 

Factors of Village Cadres’ Incentive in Changwu County

 

                              Zhengbing Wang,  Allan Rae,  Weimin Cao,  Zekui Ning

 

 

Abstract ：At present, there is a few research literatures about village cadres’ incentive, mostly focusing on negative incentive of how to control village cadres. This paper studies village cadres’ incentive on three dimensions, including job-satisfaction evaluation, job-difficulty evaluation and job-retaining will. After analyzing the first investigated rural data, building Ordered Logistic Regression Model and experimenting scene investigation, this paper has studied the four incentive elements like payment, reputation, developmental chance and institutions of rural governance, whose contribution to village cadres’ allover incentive. Following results have been found: (1) the real paid percentage of village cadres can significantly increase the job-satisfaction and  reduce the evaluation of job-difficulty, thus improve the job-retaining willingness; (2) the reputation can also improve the job-satisfaction and the job-retaining willingness significantly, decrease the evaluation of job-difficulty; (3) the normalized rural governance institutions can increase the job-satisfaction and job-retaining willingness, yet may increase the difficulty of work in short-term; (4) the incentive effect of providing some training chance to village cadres is vague.

Key Words：Village Cadres, Incentive, Ordered Logistic Regression

 

 

 

1.  Introduction

 

In China, there are 937.51million farmers (China Ministry of Agriculture, 2006). They live in many villages. In 2004, there are 652,718 administrative villages and over one million natural villages (China Bureau of Statistics, 2005). Average population of every administrative village is 1，436. In some big villages, there are often over 10,000 farmers(China Bureau of Statistics, 2005). Because villages are so big, villages need some village cadres to manage them. There were about 3.5 millions cadres in 2005.Because every village had several group, the number of cadres was over 10 millions if heads of groups were included (China Ministry of Agriculture, 2006). The average number of village cadres in a village is about 15 including 8 group heads (China Bureau of Statistics, 2005). Village cadres have many things to do for villages. However, in different periods, they have different functions and assignments.

From 1958 to 1978, all village cadres were appointed by their superior governments, town governments. Every town government manages about 20 administrative villages. In this period, China was a planed economy country. All production plans of all production units are from superior organizations. All products belong to the state and were allotted by the state. Mostly all farmland , big tools and big animals in villages were belong to villages. A village was like a farm factory (Fairbanks, 1992). All activities of society and economy in villages were arranged by village cadres. Village cadres were managed by town governments that were named people’s communes (Wu, 2002). Villages are not only economical organizations, but also administrative organizations (Liu, 2002). Village cadres’ main assignments are below: (1) fulfill production plans that superior governments assign to their villages, for example, the village plants 100 acres wheat (corn, cotton etc.) that they were asked. In the period, subtotal farmlands in villages belonged to villages, so what every piece of land was planted was decided by villages; (2) assign works to farmers, for example, who to water plants, who to fertilize, who to dig wells etc. Farmers could get food and money from their villages by their working; (3) manage villages’ properties; (4) distribute village’s products and assets. Some products were given to state according to the governments request, others were distributed to farmers according their work days; (5) organize farmers to build village public services, for instance, build roads, village schools and acequia etc; (6) keep village orders and solve any trouble things in their villages; (7) accomplish other tasks that superior government assigned them ( Wu, 2002, Wang, 2002).

Since 1978, series reforms were made in China rural (Kelliher, 1992). The most important reform was that villages’ farmlands were assigned to households according to families’ population. Every villager in same group of same village got same quantity farmlands. Although the proprietorships of farmlands still belonged to villages, farmers got rights to manage their farmlands. They had rights to decide what they should produce and how much they should produce and how to sell their products (Wang and Wei, 1995). Of course, farmers must pay agriculture tax with their agricultural products or money. Because agriculture tax in per farmland was fixed, farmers could get more aftertax products if they got more products from their farmlands. Farmers’ incentives of production were improved. Another important reform in rural was that villages were governed by superior governments changed to villagers self-governing. Village cadres were elected by villagers, no longer were appointed by superior governments (Shi, 1999). In this period, the functions of village cadres were changed to: (1) collect agriculture tax from farmers and hand it to department of revenue of town governments or county governments (The tax has been abolished since 2006); (2) supervise farmers to perform the policy of family planning; (3) help farmers to develop business; (4) help armies to recruit new soldiers from their villages; (5) collect capital and human capital from farmers to construct public goods of their villages; (6) maintain their villages to be peaceful; (7) finance village schools (most villages have their primary schools); (8) solve conflicts between farmers; (9) preach government policies and new production techniques; (10) treat with emergencies, for instance droughts, flood and pestilences etc.; (11) play host to officials or other visitors; (12) manage villages’ properties, for example wells, roads, schools, enterprises( some villages have enterprises), etc. (Wang, 2006; Yu, 2001 ;Ma, Liu and Qiu, 2000).

In China, village cadres not only must do well their villages’ affairs, but also must do well things that the governments assign them. This is principle-agent relationship between village cadres and governments (Pieke, 2004).

In a village, there are two parts in village cadres. One part belongs to the village branch of Communist Party, the other belongs to the village committee. The responsibilities of two parts and every member are stated in laws, but it is not very clear. Commonly, the head of the village council submit to the head of the branch of the Party (Wang, 2002). In other units do so in China.

Village cadres have important roles in villages, but some village cadres have more enthusiasm and some have little. In some developed villages, most farmers are anxious to be cadres, they even bribe electorates of villages in order to be elected cadres(Liu, Li and Zhang, 2006). Village cadres like to do more things for villages. They often get more benefits from villages. However, in less developed villages, no one is willing to be village cadres. For instance, there was no any village cadre in Qiaoshang Village, Tuqiao Town, Xunyi County, Shaanxi Province for 8 years in 1990’s (Wang, 2004). The reasons are that their wages are little and they can not get other benefits from these poor villages. In 2003, Zhengbing Wang inquired 100 village cadres’ wages in Xingping County (Shaanxi Province) that is a developing county. Their average annual salary is 1510 yuan (US$ 200). It is less than local farmers’ average annual income. In china, village cadres are part time jobs. They are not only village cadres, but also farmers. They are not officials. If they are no longer village cadres, they will become common farmers and can not get any money, for example wages, pensions and subsidies etc. In the past, village cadres’ wages were from their villages. If villages had no money to pay, the money would be collected from villagers. The governments pay them since 2006.

Because village cadres’ works relate with villages’ development of society and economy, many researchers focus on the issue of Chinese village cadres. However, most of them study how to restrict bad behaviors of village cadres because bad behaviors such as corruptions, defalcations, extravagances, briberies and perverting the laws etc. ( Chen and Chun, 2004). A few researchers study how to inspire village cadres to work better. The inspiring mechanisms are as important as restricting mechanisms. They are more important in poor villages. Therefore, this paper will research the issue about village cadres’ incentive factors.

In a long time，compensation is one of most important factor of incentive (Wang, 2004). In terms of management, however, when the research of human behaviors in social and economic activities are developed, incentive means to employee are gradually extended to various means except adding salary, for example working conditions, working atmosphere, working team, communication, praise, demand of power, informal organizations and so on. From economic point of view, the right of enterprises getting surplus (Grossman and  Hart，1986；Hart and Moore，1995）, occupation  reputation（Fama，1980；Kreps，1982）and culture are considered to have significant effects on incentive. Therefore, those factors which could influence the factors of incentive are various.

Strictly speaking, village cadres in China are neither employees nor officials. They are the people who live in rural area with wide peer network（Tsai, 2002 ; He，2000a）. Their works are complicated and very important. Besides, works they do are quite distinct in different periods (Xu, 2001). They are authorized by different organizations. In a way, their roles are so-called dualism（Xu，1997）. Their salary should be defined as working subsidies according to laws. Although their salary are from their villages’ farmers and the standard of their salary should be decided by the villagers’ council, the law and central government’s policies. However, the authority of compensation payment is controlled by local governments（Xu and Zheng，2001； He and Wang，2002; Peng and Zhang，2003）.Therefore, those elements, which can influence village cadres’ incentive are various and special.

Zhang and Ning thought the most efficient way to prompt to work was to add village cadres’ wages because their wages were little and they were not rich (Zhang, 2005; Ning, 2005). The cadres needed more money to improve the level of their families’ lives. Wang said that power was an important measure to improve village cadres’ positivities. This is why many villagers want to be cadres when cadres’ wages are so little. To get power is one of human natures (Wang, 2003). Reputation is regard as one important incentive measure too. Someone will be regarded as excellent person and get honor from others in the village if he is a village cadre. He enjoys his reputation even if he can only get small wage (Fei, 1996; Wu, 2002; Xu, 1999). Some researchers thought that the government should make a policy to pay village cadres pension when they are old or pay subsidy when they are no longer cadres (Tong and Jiang, 2005). Some village cadres serve as cadres for many years, they are poor when they are old and lay down the scepter. They donate their youths to villages, so they should get reward when they are old. Since 2002, a new idea has been popular. The idea is that village cadres should become professional jobs and like government officials. Village cadres can work absorbedly for villages as cadres. They need not farm their lands or do other businesses to keep the pot boiling (Zhu, 2002). As an incentive measure, village cadres could be given more chances to be trained in universities or other institutions. In this way, they not only improve their abilities and work better for villages, but also do better their businesses and get more money and no longer worry about their families’ lives (Yang, 2000).

Although there are many incentive measures, they are not clear which measures are good and which measures are better. We should know what the people that are inspired are more interested in (Stephen P. Robbins, 2001). This paper will study the problem.

To analyze this problem conveniently, from the data collected in countryside, the influenced factors of village cadres’ incentive could be classified as follows: the level of salary, developmental chance ( training , raising etc.), social reputation and  the effects of rural institutions (including the system of villagers congress, promulgating village affairs, managing finance democratically and one thing one discussion etc.).

The variables of incentive are nonrepresentational. In order to research the degrees of incentive, working positive are often used in measuring them. Based on the data of investigation, this paper use the village cadres’ levels of satisfaction for their jobs, the evaluation of their jobs’ difficulties by village cadres and the intensities of their will of retaining their jobs to show the degrees of village cadres’ incentive.

The structure of this paper：in the second part, the sources of investigation data and the characteristics of variables are introduced; what is more, Ordered Logistic Regression is used to the data analysis; the fourth part is experimenting scene investigation ; finally conclusion is presented.

 

2.  The sources of data and the characteristics of variables

 

Surveys, financed by Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University and National Natural Science Foundation of China, was processed in Zhaoren Town and Dizhang Town ,Changwu county ,Shaanxi province ,China from 15—19 November, 2005. According to Changwu government website, target area is 567.1 square kilometers. Cultivated land is 19,933 acres, and its altitude is from 847 to 1274 meters. It is 180 kilometers from the county city to Xian city (capital city of Shaanxi Province). There are 14 towns and 235 administrative villages. Its population is 171 thousands and more than ninety percent population are farmers (156 thousands). Main crops are wheat and corn. GDP is 475 million RMB (US $59million) and financial income is 21.80million RMB (US $ 2.7 million) in 2004.

 

Table 1   Main variables in computation

Variables	Meaning of variables	Measure	N	Mean	Std. Dev.
Variables of incentive
Sat	Level of job- satisfaction	1＝Dissatisfaction，2＝Commonly，3＝Satisfaction	93	2.538	0.563
Dif	Evaluation of job- difficulty	1＝easy，2＝Commonly，3＝more difficulty，4＝Most difficulty	100	3.230	0.664
Cont	Will of retaining job	1＝No，2＝Unconcern，3＝Yes	98	1.980	0.849
Variables of individual character
X1	Age	Unit：year	110	47.891	7.696
X2	Education	Years of education，Unit：year	94	9.255	2.309
X3	Communist Party member	1＝Yes，0＝No	102	0.755	0.432
X4	Population of family	Unit: people	112	4.643	1.207
Variables of salary
X5	Nominal salary	Unit：RMB/year	88	7662.636	5455.019
X6	Paid percentage	Unit：％	95	52.986	33.519
Variables of occupation  reputation
X7	Social reputation	1＝Reduction，2＝No change，3＝Improvement	102	1.775	0.854
Variables of institution
X8	Effect of institution	1＝Bad，2＝Commonly，3＝Good	100	2.300	0.577

Note: N—number of samples. Some people surveyed did not answer some questions, so not all N are 112; Mean-mean value of all samples.

 

In Zhaoren Town, there are 27 administrative villages and average net income of farmers was 1934 yuan in 2004. In Dizhang Town, there are 27 administrative villages too and average net income of farmers was 1410 yuan in 2004. Average net income of Chinese farmers was 2936yuan in 2004.

Questionnaires and symposia were used in this survey. 128 questionnaires had been collected. Nevertheless, 112 of them could be used in this research. Those questionnaires involved with village cadres of 40 villages (17 villages belong to Zhaoren Town, 23 villages belong to Dizhang Town), included 2 developed villages, 17 developing villages and 21 underdeveloped villages.

We choose three indexes, level of job-satisfaction, evaluation of job- difficulty and will of retaining job, to denote incentive variables. The variables can show incentive level to village cadres. We choose 8 independent variables as influencing variables of village cadres’ positivities: village cadres’ age(X1), education years of village cadres(X2), village cadres are Communist Party members or no(X3), family population of village cadres(X4), village cadres’ nominal salary(X5), the rate of village cadres’ salary paid(X6), village cadres’ social reputation(X7) and the effects of village institutions and systems performed(X8). The variables are used in computation in table 1.

From table 1, we know that the village cadres had high level of job-satisfaction and the mean value of levels is 2.538 and Std. Dev. is 0.563, at one time, they thought the level of job-difficulty was high too, mean value is 3.230 and Std. Dev. is 0.664. The village cadres who were surveyed were older. Their average age was 47.891. Their education years were not much and average years were 9.255. Most of them were Communist Party members and the percentage was 75.5%. The gap was big among their nominal salary. The rate of their salary paid was small and mean value was 52.986% and Std. Dev. was 33.519%. Most of village cadres thought their reputation was lower in present than in the past.

 

3.  Analysis Data

 

3.1  Non-parametric measure testing using Kendall's tau-b

 

The following table illustrates ordered variables. Kendall's tau-b  test of  non-parameters’  relativity can be used to test the data （Fan，2004）. Statistical software package SPSS13.0 is used here and the results are presented in table 2.

From three indexes of level of job-satisfaction , evaluation of job- difficulty and will of retaining position in table 2, we can know that the village cadres have high level of satisfaction to their jobs and high level of job-difficulty that they think, so their will of retaining jobs are decrease. The village cadres surveyed, their age are old (average age 50 years), are mostly members of Communist Party (members 75.5 percent) and have less education years (average 9 years).They are found that at present village cadres’ nominal wages have big gap and low paid percentage. Therefore the village cadres think their social reputation has dropped.

 

 

Table 2   Test of non-parameters’ relativity （Kendall's tau_b coefficients）

	Sat	Dif	Cont	X1	X2	X3	X4	X5	X6	X7	X8
Sat	1.000
Dif	－0.093	1.000
Cont	0.367**	－0.105	1.000
X1	0.133	0.045	－0.019	1.000
X2	－0.081	0.021	－0.147	－0.230**	1.000
X3	0.136	－0.113	－0.030	0.077	0.061	1.000
X4	0.282**	0.021	0.291**	0.057	－0.098	－0.093	1.000
X5	0.116	0.081	0.147*	－0.012	－0.070	0.035	0.162*	1.000
X6	0.327**	－0.198**	0.280**	0.096	－0.087	－0.004	0.119	0.100	1.000
X7	0.253**	－0.156*	0.375**	0.014	－0.040	－0.031	0.163*	0.077	0.225**	1.000
X8	0.506**	－0.064	0.282**	0.001	0.138	0.159	0.152*	0.195**	0.108	0.280**	1.000

Notes：**Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed)；*Correlation is significant at the 0.10 level (2-tailed)。

 

The variables of the level of job- satisfaction and the will of job-retaining have positive correlations with the variables of family’s population, ration of salary paid, social reputation and institution. It demonstrates that the level of village cadres’ incentive will be improved if their family is getting bigger in terms of numbers of family member. The reason is that village cadres have more chances to meet local government officials and other important people. Therefore, they could enhance their social relationships to benefit their families in various ways. For instance, One surveyed village cadres pointed out “As a village cadre, firstly I can quickly get known government’s polices and information; secondly I have more chances to contact with government officials and help my family by using these relationships”. On the other hand, the following example of our surveyed cadre interprets his job in an extreme way. “Village cadres have more advantages than farmers, for instance, one of our village cadres was not be punished when he had one more child against government policy.” From table 2, readers can know that the ration of village cadres’ salary paid is low, so nominal salary has less incentive. However, increasing ration of salary paid can improve level of job-satisfaction and will of job-retaining.

Evaluation of job-difficulty has remarkable association with the ration of salary paid and social reputation. By their correlation coefficient, we know that increasing ration of salary paid and improving social reputation can reduce the level of job-difficulty they evaluate.

 

3.2 Ordered Logistic Model

 

Because causal variables (the level of job-satisfaction, the evaluation of job-difficulty and the willingness of retaining job) in this paper are ordered variables, they are estimated by Ordered Regression Model（Gao，2006）。We use economical software package Eveiws4.0 to compute Ordered Logistic Model. The result is in table 3.

 

 

Table 3  The estimation result of Ordered Regression Model

	Sat			Dif			Cont
	coefficient	Z	P	coefficient	Z	P	coefficient	Z	P
X1	－0.029	－0.537	0.591	－0.024	－0.555	0.579	－0.080	－1.644	0.100
X2	－0.253	－1.395	0.163	－0.047	－0.336	0.737	－0.324	－2.097	0.036
X3	0.842	0.959	0.338	－0.268	－0.384	0.701	－0.329	－0.479	0.632
X4	0.641	2.063	0.039	0.236	0.939	0.348	0.405	1.667	0.096
X5	0.000	0.536	0.592	0.000	0.756	0.450	0.000	0.684	0.494
X6	0.024	1.954	0.051	－0.041	－3.306	0.001	0.014	1.360	0.174
X7	1.170	2.086	0.037	－0.471	－1.117	0.264	0.897	2.297	0.022
X8	1.052	1.158	0.247	1.123	1.437	0.151	0.966	1.384	0.167
P_R2	0.3623			0.1670			0.2482
LL	－28.2898			－43.2321			－44.4614
N	52			55			55
Z is statistical quantity，P is probability of significant； P_R2  is Pseudo－R2，LL is Log likelihood，N is quantity of sample.

 

 

3.2.1．Factors of individual characters

 

The variables denote individual’s age, education, political visage and numbers of family member. In all three regression model, most of the variables are not significantly (table 3). However, meanings from economic point of view are clear. For example, when village cadres’ are getting old, there is an inverse relationship between age and their level of job-satisfaction , evaluation of job-difficulty and will of job retaining. In China，rural society, economy and institutions are changing tremendously, but old village cadres could use their experiences and have old fogy conceptions, they often animadvert on nowadays’ things. They think village public affaires are more difficult to do in present than they were done in past（Ning etal.2005）.

There is an inverse relationship between education years and their job satisfaction level , evaluation of job-difficulty and will of job retaining,  because the village cadres who have more education years would have more chances to develop other occupations, especially in non-agriculture businesses. In other words, the more education years the village cadres have, the more opportunity costs they would get. In conclude, they get less incentive from village cadres’ positions.

In regression model, coefficients of the variable of the village cadres’ political visage are positive numbers in the level of job’s satisfaction model (table 3). Those mean that the village cadres could have high level of their job-satisfaction if they are members of Communist Party. Therefore, the village cadres’ working positive could be improved and they have more strength of cohesion in their cadres’ teams if there are more members of Communist Party in them. However, in the models of the evaluation of job-difficulties and the will of job retaining, some regression coefficients of the village cadres’ political visage are negative. The reasons may be that there are conflicts between two administrant organizations because there are a branch of Communist Party and a villager committee in a village. The Party’s branches in villages are skeleton organizations of Communist Party and managed by towns’ Party organizations. The villager committees are voted by villagers according to The Law of Villagers’ Organizations. The two organizations have powers to govern villages, but there is no clear division for their works, so there always are conflicts between them（He，2000b）.The conflicts add the level of village cadres’ working difficulties and less their will of job retaining（Ning and Qu，2006）. Therefore, new village management models should be considered in order to improve village cadres’ enthusiasm.

 

 3.2.2．Factors of Wage

 

In the model of the level of job satisfaction, coefficient of the variable of village cadres’ nominal wages (X5) is null (table 3). It demonstrates the incentive of the village cadres’ nominal salary is not significant. The reason is that the levels of the village cadres’ salary are regulated and paid by their superior governments, local governments. Peng and Zhang (2003) also proved that there was no significant relativity between the levels of the village cadres’ nominal salary and their actual workload. The gaps among the village cadres’ workload are quite large. The reason is that the gaps of villages’ population and land are big. For example, there are over 10,000 people in some villages and only several hundreds or decades people in other villages. They think the reason is that village cadres’ salaries are determined by town governments.

Village cadres’ salaries usually are not paid fully. Only fifty five percent of their salary could be redeemed by local government (table 1). It is found in the models of this section that there are important functions in improving level of job-satisfaction and less the level of job-difficulty that village cadres evaluate by increasing the rate of the nominal salaries paid. In the regression model of job-satisfaction, the coefficient of rate of nominal salaries paid（X6）is positive, absolute value of Z of statistical quantities is big, and P-value is statistically significant. These show that to increase the rate of village cadres’ wages paid can improve their levels of jobs’ satisfaction. In the model of jobs’ difficulties evaluation, the coefficient of X6 is negative, absolute value of Z of statistical quantities is the biggest one, and there is strong evidence that P-value is statistically significant. They demonstrate that increasing the rate of village cadres’ salaries paid can reduce the level of jobs’ difficulties that they evaluate. Therefore, to increase the rate of village cadres’ salaries paid could improve their working positive and less their whines.

 

3.2.3．Factor of Social Reputation

 

In the two models of the level of job-satisfaction and will of job retaining, the regression coefficients of the variable of social reputation (X7) are not only prominently positive, but also are much bigger (table 3). They demonstrate that village cadres’ incentives can be improved by increasing their social reputation.

 

3.2.4．Factor of institute

 

From 1990’s, China has carried out a series of new institutes in villages. For example, villagers’ council, democratic monetary organization, the system of so-called ‘one thing, one discussion’ , the system of opening village’s  affairs and so on( Wang ,2001). In 40 villages that we surveyed, 94.1 percent of the villages have the systems of villager council, 79.4 percent of the villages have the organizations of democratic financing, 97.2 percent of the villages have the systems of so-called ‘one thing, one discussion’ and 91.2 percent of the villages implemented the system of opening village’s affairs. However, in 112 villages’ cadres we surveyed, 36 percent of the village cadres think that the effects of these systems are good in their villages, 58 percent of them thought the effects are generic in their villages. Only six percent of them thought the effects were bad in their villages. The systems are same, but there are different effects that they were implemented.

The contributions of the effects of the institutes implemented to the village cadres’ incentive can be seen in table 3. Although the variable of the system is not significant in statistical view, it could improve the level of village cadres’ satisfaction and their will of job-retaining if the effects of the institutes implemented are becoming better. At the meanwhile, the level of village cadres’ working difficulties will be improved. There are four reasons .（1）The institutes that are well-implemented could reduce possible relationships by misunderstanding between  cadres and  villagers due to system drawbacks.（2）By carrying the standard systems ,Village cadres can have clear anticipations of their work. It could decrease their anxieties and uneasiness which is caused by instable policies. （3）Well done the village systems can distinguish the powers and the duties between the village branches of Party and village governments ,then it could adjust or even reduce the conflicts between the two organizations. So the working effects of the two organizations could be improved and village cadres will have better feelings in self-identities and ascriptions to organizations and their jobs.（4）In short term, the systems may cause some troubles or inconveniences, because village cadres’ passing experiences and styles maybe can not fit with villages’ new conditions. The maladjustment will disappear as village cadres know the systems well and get accustomed to the systems ( Wang, 2001).

 

4.  Further Demonstrations：experimenting scene investigation

 

In order to prove the result in section three further, a series of data collected are used to demonstrate them in this section. In the process of collection, some hypotheses are designed in the questionnaires. In other words, the village cadres were asked to tell their states about working positive if the conditions are actualized. The investigation model is“If the conditions are actualized, do you think your working positive can be improved（please tick your choices）?”. The conditions and the options are in table 4. The result of 112 village cadres’ choices is in table 4 (some village cadres didn’t answer some parts of the questions).

 

Table 4   The result of simulation experiment

Item	Sample number	affirmation	possible	impossible
Raise village cadres’ wage at10%	84	22(26.2%)	46(54.8%)	16(19.0%)
Let village cadres learn in training classes or in universities	63	23(36.5%)	17(27.0%)	23(36.5%)
Add village cadres’ mission of levying tax from villagers	54	7(13.0%)	9(16.7%)	38(70.4%)
Villagers have rights to estimate their cadres	62	20(32.3%)	35(56.5%)	7(11.3%)
The cadres who didn’t fulfill their mission of levying tax are punished by higher fine	58	12(20.7%)	21(36.2%)	25(43.1%)
Village cadres are supervised by officials appointed by town government	51	20(39.2%)	22(43.1%)	9(17.6%)
Year-salary is implemented and paid by superior government	85	46(54.1%)	35(41.2%)	4(4.7%)
The system of opening village affairs is carried strictly	64	38(59.4%)	23(35.9%)	3(4.7%)
Supervising institutions consisted of villagers are founded	55	30(54.5%)	24(43.6%)	1(1.8%)
Increase village cadres’ power	55	16(29.1%)	29(52.7%)	10(18.2%)

Note： Sample number is the number of the village cadres who answer the questions

 

The below conclusions can be seen from the experiment.

First, there is no evidence showing that village cadres’ positive could be improved by raising their nominal wages. However, their positive could be improved significantly if their compensation as year salary are paid by superior governments. The reason is that village cadres’ wages are often defaulted. For example, in Changwu countryside, village cadres’ wages have been not paid for nine years in some villages. Therefore, the conclusion is demonstrated in the models of the section three: Cashing village cadres’ wages has more effective to improve their positive than raising their nominal wages does. In village cadres symposia we held, they all care of village cadres’ year salary. They thought their salary should be paid by county’s governments as town governments ’ finance were usually not enough .

Second, the variable that is similar with village cadres’ social reputation is village cadres’ power. The result of experimenting scene investigation demonstrates that 29.1 percent village cadres affirm their positive can be improved by increasing their power, 18.2 percent village cadres do not agree with that, and 52.7% percent village cadres’ ideas are not clear. Therefore, the effect of increasing village cadres’ power to improve their positive is unknown.

Third, in village management systems, the village cadres think village cadres’ positive can be improved by setting up supervise organizations, implementing opening village affaires strictly and villagers participating in valuating village cadres’ work achievements.

 Fourth, in village cadres’ development, the variable of “letting village cadres learn in training classes or in universities” is used in the simulation experiment. The result of the experiment demonstrates that the effect of improving village cadres’ positive is limited or unclear by giving village cadres chances to study.

Finally, village cadres’ positive could not be improved or be less by adding their tasks and town governments intensifying domination to them. In the experimenting scene investigation, the village cadres told clearly that it is impossible to improve their work enthusiasm by adding their mission of levying tax from villagers and increasing fine to the cadres if they do not finish their missions. The effect of improving village cadres’ enthusiasm by town governments appointing officials to supervise them was smaller than by standardizing villages’ institutions, such as setting up supervision organizations, implementing the system of opening village affaires strictly and villagers participating in valuating village cadres’ work achievements.

From the data analysis in section three and the simulation experiment in this section, we find that village cadres’ salary, social reputation, village management institutions and development chances have different effects in improving their enthusiasm. The incentive effects are in table 5.

 

Table 5   Village cadres’ enthusiasm and factors

		Enthusiasm
		Degree of job satisfaction	Degree of job difficulty	Will of job retaining
Factor	Salary（percentage in cashing）	＋，★★★	－，★★★★★	＋，★★
	Social reputation（including treatment in politics）	＋，★★★	－，★★	＋，★★★★
	Effect of village institutions implemented	＋，★	＋，★★	＋，★★
	Developmental chances（be trained）	？	？	？

Note：“＋”positive enthusiasm；“－”negative enthusiasm；“？”dark；“★”degree, the more, the higher degree .

 

 

   5. Conclusions

 

The paper analyses the factors that impact village cadres’ incentive to their enthusiasm with regression model based on collected data. The result shows that village cadres’ enthusiasm can be improved apparently by raising their wages and its percentage of payment they are supposed to get, improving their social reputation and implementing standard village management institutions. However, the effects are not significant by giving their development chances such as training them etc. In addition, the conclusion is displayed from the collected data in northwestern countries in China. It should be proved by more data from more areas whether it is right in other areas.

 

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刊于《China-USA Business Review》（USA）,2008(4),P4-14.

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