280 Communities and Social Capital
Households with high innovative capacity are those with the capacity to seek,
adopt or develop a new production technology or practice by themselves. By con-
trast, those with low innovative capacity are unlikely to adopt innovations unless
major barriers (e.g. information, credit or selling risk) are removed. Not surpris-
ingly, over three-quarters of households in valley villages fell into the category of
high HIC, whilst 60 per cent of those in remote villages were in the low category.
Some 30 per cent of households in the middle villages were high and 42 per cent
low in the HIC assessment.
To examine the features of the HIC and the impacts of the local resource envi-
ronments, all households in middle and remote villages were compared based upon
the division of their HIC. Samples in valley villages are taken out from the compari-
son in order to reduce the impacts from predominant resource factors (access to
main roads, irrigated land, electricity and TV connection). Table 15.5 highlights
Table 15.4 Division of household innovative capacity by score and income
(number of households)Total HIC
scoreIncome (yuan per person) Households in each
<300 300–699 700–999 >=1000 HIC class(^60391527)
5093416
4 10 11 9 13 43
3 81734 32
(^210191131)
Table 15.5 Features of the levels of HIC and relevant factors in marginal areas of
Zhidan
Category Low HIC Medium HIC High HIC
No. households 64 39 24
Net income (yuan/person) 336 762 1357
Product inputs (yuan/person) 104 180 193
Proportion of income from new cash crops and
non-farm income (%)
18 40 69
Distance to central village (km) 2.0 2.8 1.9
Distance to main road (km) 5.6 7.5 3.9
Education: <=1 ys (%) 42.2 35.9 29.2
2–5 ys (%) 39.1 33.3 20.8
=6 ys (%) 18.8 30.8 50.0
Note: New cash crops include hybrid seed plantation, greenhouse for vegetables, fruit and herb
plantation, and non-farming is derived from wool, blacksmith, bricklayer, tiler, carpenter and
various other labour services.