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

Land expropriation has always been a hot spot of social conflicts. The land expropriation policy of Merging Villages and 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 most simply assesses the degree of conflict and the influencing factors but rarely includes farmers, governments at all levels, the strength of policy tools, and policy perceptions in a unified quantitative research framework, which is not conducive to conflict resolution and policy improvement. 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 methods of conflict resolution from the perspective of different stakeholder conflicts. The theoretical analysis framework and the quantitative analysis of the indicators are verified by using a case study of MVLT policy in Shandong Province, China. The results show that the credibility of the policy of “village integration” is influenced by individual characteristics and varies significantly. The administrative means and different combinations of lower-level government are significantly related to an increase in farmers’ credibility, which can significantly improve the success rate of policy implementation. The effect of administrative means of higher-level government on the credibility of farmers is limited. The highest value of the conflict index was observed when the administrative instruments reached the maximum value without a marginal increase in farmers’ credibility. Based on the quantitative evaluation of conflict generation and resolution mechanisms, recommendations for policy implementation and improvement were made.