Impact of the Auditing of Natural Resource Assets on Farmland Protection

The Auditing of Natural Resource Assets (ANRA) is an institutional arrangement in China that evaluates leading cadres’ performance in the management and protection of natural resource assets at the time of their departure from office. Although existing studies have examined the institutional design and implementation mechanisms of ANRA, empirical evidence on its direct impact on farmland protection remains limited. Moreover, previous research has largely overlooked spatial heterogeneity in ANRA’s effects across diverse local contexts such as economic regions and different grain functional areas. To narrow these gaps, this study generated a panel data set, covering 275 prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2017. The study employed a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model to empirically evaluate the effects of ANRA on farmland protection. The results show that the implementation of the ANRA policy has significantly increased farmland area in pilot regions, with an average annual increase of approximately 5800 hectares relative to non-pilot regions during the post-policy period. The policy effects varied across regions and the positive impact is more pronounced in the eastern regions and major grain-producing regions. Mechanism evidence suggests that the ANRA contributes to farmland protection by reshaping local land-use behavior. Based on these findings, the paper recommends promoting the normalization and standardization of ANRA, strengthening land use regulation to enhance resource allocation efficiency, and improving the design of policy classifications based on regional heterogeneity.