Study on the Role and Operating Mechanism of Rural Environmental Co-operatives in China

Rural environment protection is increasingly prominent, but rural environment management mode is still being discussed. The major barrier resulting from institutional economics is that it takes too much information cost to supervise billions of farmers in China. The authors stress that rural environmental co-operatives can greatly reduce the information cost and effectively deal with rural environment management. In order to give full play to this effect, rural environmental co-operatives must pass on the award and penalty from supervisor to individual farmer. This paper further identifies the shortcoming of rural environmental co-operatives in China and puts forward improvement measures.