Coupling Coordination and Interactivity between Farmland Transfer and Rural Financial Development: Evidence from Western China

The farmland transfer system (FTS) and rural financial development system (FDS) are economic systems with extensive connotation and coupling characteristics, and the interactive development of these systems is of great significance to rural economic growth. This study takes 10 provinces in western China as the research object and establishes a multi-index evaluation system. The entropy method, coupling coordination model and panel vector autoregression model (PVAR) were used to explore the comprehensive development level, coupled coordination degree and interaction of the FTS and the FDS in western China. The following results can be drawn: (1) the comprehensive development level of the FTS in western China is much higher than that of the FDS in both time and space; and (2) the FTS and FDS in western China have a strong correlation. The two subsystems interact with each other and restrict and promote each other, and their coupling coordination degree is optimized year by year. However, the coupling coordination degree and relative development level of each province vary by the economic development level, natural resources, agricultural productivity level and financial development structure of each province. (3) The FTS and FDS have the greatest effect on themselves, respectively, and the effect of the FTS on the FDS is greater than that of the FDS on the FTS. We suggest that the government strengthen support for rural financial institutions and speed up the market-oriented reform of agricultural land, rural finance and other production factors to realize the long-term mechanism of coordinated development of the FTS and FDS.