Social Connectedness in Marginal Rural China 279whilst others have only middle and remote villages. Thus comparisons at township
or administrative village levels may not accurately reflect the particular issues fac-
ing these remote villages.
Our survey showed that valley villages had more opportunities to access inward
investment (e.g. the re-establishment of irrigation systems in recent years) than
remote and middle villages. Households in valley villages were predominated by
cash crops and non-farming activities, whilst the main sources of household income
in the remote villages were from the traditional grains and small livestock. As the
middle villages are closer to remote villages in terms of resource conditions and
development patterns, we combined their data to compare with the distinctly dif-
ferent context of valley villages.
The questionnaire survey was used to measure three aspects of household
innovative capacity in terms of production technologies: the use of production
inputs, the structure of household production revenues and level of household net
income per capita. By contrast to traditional farming system (no or low produc-
tion inputs, heavily dependency on grain and sheep, and low economic returns),
these criteria provide a set of the objective indicators to recognize the different
capacity of household technology learning and adoption. Giving a range of scores
from 1 (low), 2 (medium) to 3 (high) to assess household use of production inputs
and structure (which refers to the share of new products in household cash reve-
nues) respectively, each household was allocated a total score for innovative capac-
ity. As a result, Table 15.4 shows a range of the total scores in the left column from
the minimum of 2 to a maximum of 6. Combining total scores vertically with net
income levels horizontally, all sample households can be divided into three groups
from bottom left to top right, resulting in three levels of household innovation
capacity (HIC). Adopting an assessment panel shown in Table 15.4, all households
were graded into three groups for HIC: high, medium and low.
Table 15.3 Division of sample villages and resource endowmentsVillage category Valley Middle Remote
Average altitude (m) 1260 1370 1500
Farmland per household (mu) 5mu, irrigated 3mu, terraces 2mu, terraces
Road access main road simple vehicle
roadNo road likelyElectricity power connection Yes Ready soon None
Drinking water source Within village Nearby village Distance
(>1.5km)
Distance to main road (km) 0 4 8
Distance to local market (km) 5 8 18
Village size (household) 29 20 14
Net income per capita (yuan/person) 1318 740 578Source: Data are derived from survey of 50 villages (5 valley, 18 middle, 27 remote)