Establishing an effective incentive mechanism for grass-roots village officials to encourage them to lead income growth for rural residents is an important measure to realize the rural revitalization strategy. Based on the incentive theory and a panel data of representative villages from 2004 to 2018, this paper analyzed the impacts of incentive mechanism of village committee head on the income growth of rural residents and explored the mediating effect of public investment by a fixed effect model. Results show that the annual salary of village committee head has been increasing gradually from 5 500.55 CNY in 2004 to 26 480.49 CNY in 2018. However, the percentage of annual salary growth coupling with assessment indicators, crucial assessment indicator being economic development and salary deduction by greater than or equal to 10% when crucial assessment indicator not meeting the target showed a decreasing trend. The per capita net income in villages maintained steady growth, and it increased from 3 735.71 CNY in 2004 to 12 020.34 CNY in 2018. The income of rural residents in developed eastern coastal areas represented by Jiangsu Province was much higher than that in other areas. This research also found that both the annual salary and crucial assessment indicator significantly affected per capita net income. The annual salary imposed influences on per capita net income through the amounts of public investment partially funded by the village collective. Based on these findings, this paper suggested that the government should set reasonable assessment indicators for village committee head, increase annual salary of village committee head, and enlarge the scale of public investment in underdeveloped villages.

Keywords :incentive mechanism; income of rural residents; public investment; village official; rural revitalization

Corresponding author: Linxiu Zhang, lxzhang.ccap@igsnrr.ac.cn