Conflict Resolution between Multi-Level Government and Farmers in Land Expropriation Based on Institutional Credibility Theory: Empirical Evidence from Shandong Province, China

AbstractThe land expropriation policy of Merging Villages & Living Together (MVLT) in rural areas has intensified conflicts due to insufficient financial compensation and "demolishing old houses before building new ones". The current research rarely includes farmers, governments at all levels, the strength of policy tools, and policy perceptions into a unified quantitative research framework.This paper adopts the institutional credibility theory, incorporates the policy instruments of higher-level governments, administrative instruments of lower-level governments, and farmers' credibility of policies into a unified accounting framework, constructs a conflict stress index, evaluates the role of each subject's characteristics, policy perceptions, and policy instruments in the process of conflict generation and resolution, and analyzes the ways of conflict resolution from the perspective of different stakeholder games. The analysis framework are verified by using the case study of MVLT policy in Shandong Province, China.The results show that the credibility of the policy is influenced by individual characteristics and varies significantly. The administrative means and different combinations of the lower level government can significantly improve the success rate of policy implementation. The highest value of the conflict index was observed when the administrative instruments reached the maximum value without marginal increase in farmers' credibility for policy implementation and improvement were made.