作者：Xueru Yang; Xiaoke Shi; Kun Liu*

期刊：《Journal of Business Venturing》

出版时间：2026年 Vol. 141  NO.4

校内级别：T2类

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2026.106602

Abstract

How do changes in property rights shape individual entrepreneurship in weak institutional settings? Although secure property rights are widely viewed as essential to entrepreneurial action, most research treats them as static arrangements rather than evolving institutions. As a result, we know little about how property rights reforms influence individuals' decisions to engage in entrepreneurship, or how these effects vary across social and institutional contexts. We address this gap by examining China's 2014–2018 agricultural land titling program, which formalized land use rights through a quasi-natural experiment. Using individual-level survey data and a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that land titling increases farmers' likelihood of entering self-employment, especially among marginalized groups and in regions with stronger complementary institutions. These findings highlight the dynamic nature of property rights, showing how institutional reforms allow individuals to reassess uncertainty and realign incentives in ways that motivate entrepreneurial action. Executive summary This paper investigates how institutional reforms to property rights influence individual decisions to pursue entrepreneurship in contexts of weak institutions and deep social stratification. Although secure property rights are widely recognized as foundational to entrepreneurial activity, existing research has largely focused on macroeconomic outcomes or treated the connection as conceptual or assumed. We address this gap by leveraging a rare quasi-natural experiment: China's 2014–2018 agricultural land titling program, which clarified and formalized land use rights across the countryside through a centrally mandated, GPS-based registration process. Drawing on a nationally representative individual-level panel survey and using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that land titling significantly increases the likelihood that farmers transition into self-employment. Importantly, this effect is not equally distributed across the population. The reform has a particularly strong impact among individuals from marginalized social groups—those with rural hukou, no Party membership, or outsider status in village lineage structures—who had previously been disadvantaged in informal institutional systems. We theorize that for these individuals, land titling reduced uncertainty, unlocked dormant asset value, and, crucially, made entrepreneurship a more credible and accessible path. In contrast, more privileged individuals experienced smaller shifts in motivation, having already been able to navigate informal channels of influence and protection. We also find that the reform's impact is amplified in regions with more developed market institutions, underscoring the importance of institutional complementarity in enabling reform outcomes. Theoretically, the paper integrates insights from property rights theory and stratification research to explain how institutional reforms activate entrepreneurial behavior not only by shifting incentives, but by altering perceived opportunity structures in stratified environments. Rather than treating institutional change as uniformly enabling, we show how entrepreneurial responses are shaped by social positioning and local institutional capacity. In doing so, the study contributes to entrepreneurship research by offering direct, individual-level causal evidence on how and for whom property rights reforms matter. It advances the behavioral foundations of institutional theory and offers practical implications for inclusive policy design in emerging economies.

Keywords: Property rights; Quasi-natural experiment; Social stratifcation ; Complementary institutions

Funding：NationalSocialScienceFundPost-ProjectSupportProgram（25FGLB076）