The market entry of collectively-owned operating construction land (COCL) is an important policy of the Chinese government to promote the flow of rural land elements in the market. Describ-ing, characterizing, and understanding collective action for COCL marketization in China is conducive to identifying potential contradictions in a timely manner, constructing common goals, and promoting stakeholder cooperation to improve the efficiency of land marketization.

Land and water are vital resources for sustaining rural livelihoods and are critical for rural development as they form the basis of agriculture, the main economic activity for rural communities. Nevertheless, in most developing countries, land and water resources are unevenly distributed due to historical and socio-economic imbalances, hence the need for land reform policies to address these disparities. However, redistributing land without considering the interconnectedness of land and socio-ecological systems can compound existing food and water insecurity challenges.

Land system reform is inseparable from land policy evolution in the reform process. Understanding land system reform from the perspective of policy evolution is crucial for the further deepening of the reform. Based on a review of policy documents on urban land system reform over the past 70 years (1949–2021), this paper applies a policy analysis framework based on punctuated-equilibrium theory to analyze the process of China’s urban land system reform and its inner mechanism.

Changes in land policy not only determine agricultural growth, but also have bearing on issues, such as peasants’ rights and interests, industrial development, and urbanization. On account of China’s singular history and culture, its land systems are somewhat unique. This paper analyzes the institutional changes that took place before and after 1978 to show the journey of land system reform in rural China in the 20th century.

Land administration is the managing of spatial and legal data pertaining to land. Land administration organizations provide services for land ownership and are essential to a well-functioning land administration system to secure land and property rights for all and support real estate markets. This article reviews the case of the Hellenic Land Administration Reform and the associated changes in the land administration organizations during the economic crisis period (2009–2018).

Economic development often leads to the misallocation of labor resources, so reforming the way land is allocated is important for developing a strategy to address the insufficient supply and oversupply of labor in China. This paper uses panel regression analysis to quantitatively measure the effect of the market supply of construction land (MSCL) on labor resources misallocation (LMIS). The results show that LMIS decreased year-by-year during the study period. The development of the MSCL can effectively reduce LMIS.

In the context of China’s new round of land reform, narrowing the scope of land expropriation, standardising the procedures for land expropriation, and building a unified urban and rural construction land market have become the objectives of land expropriation reform. The new Land Management Law of the People’s Republic of China confirms land expropriation for tract development as a new situation for the land acquisition system.

Understanding the impact of the three pilot reforms of the rural land system (TRRLS) on rural residential land use transition (RRLUT) based on the land use transition (LUT) theory is crucial for promoting rural land system reform. However, there is still a lack of research on this, and the LUT theory also needs to be improved from a systematic perspective to eliminate the misunderstanding of LUT in academia. To address this, this study firstly attempts to deepen the conceptual model and the understanding of characteristics of LUT from a regime shifts perspective.

This paper aims to evaluate the internal processes of the current land administration in Kenya based on the following parameters that include ownerships, transactions, transfers, inquiries, public records of maps as attributes, issues, and customer satisfaction using stakeholder surveys and focused group discussions.

Despite the recent successful establishment of systematic land registration programs in some African countries including Ethiopia, updating the land registers has become a growing concern. However, there is limited empirical evidence about whether landholders’ behavior is driving the lack of updating land registers in Ethiopia. Using the theory of planned behavior, this study examines the factors that influence landholders’ behavior of formalizing rural land transactions in Ethiopia. Primary and secondary data were collected using surveys, key informant interviews, and a literature review.

A land market is emerging in Tanzania, triggered by initiatives to reform land legislation and modernize agriculture through frugal innovations, combining hybrid seeds and weather-based index insurance with the use of mobile telephones. The analysis shows that agricultural modernization can be a driver for an emerging land market. Demand for land increases and because of the liberalization of land rights, land can be bought or leased, something the more successful farmers do.

The key to a smooth land transfer (including land transfer-out and transfer-in) lies in the cooperation between the land supply and demand parties. Existing studies explore how land registration programs affect land transfer from a macro level or from a micro level in a certain area, but little consideration has been given to the interaction and behavioral disciplines of stakeholders. This article aims at testing the possible mechanism of the land registration program on land transfer in rural China by bridging and extending concepts from peasant theories and by employing mediation models.