Farmers’ Awareness of Ecosystem Services and the Associated Policy Implications

Abstract

This study analyzes the primary factors influencing farmers' awareness of ecosystem services. This study, through questionnaires, conducts research on farmers' awareness of and demand for ecosystem service functions. The research encapsulates 156 households from 21 groups of villagers in the Guangxi Karst Ecological Immigration District in China. The results of the factors influencing farmers' awareness of ecosystem services, analyzed using a regression model, show that: (1) Farmers are concerned with ecosystem service functions that directly benefit them; however, they do not sufficiently understand the ecosystem's ecological security maintenance or cultural landscape functions; (2) Farmers' awareness of ecosystem service functions is not consistent with their corresponding demand, including the ecosystem's leisure and entertainment, social security, disaster prevention and water purification services; (3) Education level, land area cultivated by the household, proportion of the household's income from agriculture and immigration status directly affect farmers' awareness of ecosystem services; (4) Farmers' personal characteristics, family characteristics and subjective attitudes have different effects on the level of ecological service cognition. Understanding farmers' awareness of ecosystem services, and the influencing factors can help policymakers and development managers plan local development and policies, and enable harmonious development of the human-earth system in immigration regions of China.

How Does Improve Farmers’ Attitudes toward Ecosystem Services to Support Sustainable Development of Agriculture? Based on Environmental Kuznets Curve Theory

“…The results stress that gender influences farmers' perceptions of relative importance of ES: male farmers are more cognizant of the importance of ES, notably for biological pest control and maintenance of natural genetic diversity. This is similar to the findings of other studies which demonstrate male farmers are more aware of ES and more likely to perceive the less obvious ES [35][36][37], probably because the less obvious ES (e.g., maintenance of natural genetic diversity) indirectly impacts farmers and requires some degree of ecological knowledge to be understood. On one hand, direct work on farmland promotes better opportunities for male famers to gain more experience with ecological processes [34].…”

“…On one hand, acceptance of PES schemes which offer financial compensation for the costs of certain management actions is likely to strengthen perceptions that ecosystem services are valuable [44][45][46]. On the other hand, the farmers who endorse ES values are likely to accept PES schemes as an effective way to manage farmland [36,47,48]. Payments for ecosystem services have attracted increasing interest as a mechanism to encourage an effective combination of environmental protection with agricultural production (e.g., the US Conservation Security Program (CSP) and the European agri-environment schemes (AES)) [1,49,50].…”

Linking Multifunctionality and Sustainability for Valuing Peri-Urban Farming: A Case Study in the Turin Metropolitan Area (Italy)

“…Each interview lasted approximately one hour. Based on the theoretical framework proposed by Xun et al (2017) to analyze multifunctional character of peri-urban agroecosystems [36], we investigated these aspects: farm structure, production and activities and future scenarios. Table 1 shows the questionnaire used, the parameters analyzed and the assignment in farmers' interviews.…”

Farmers’ Awareness of the Low Yield of Conventional Rice Production in Ayeyarwady Region, Myanmar: A Case Study of Myaungmya District

“…Education, farmland size, and annual income were positively correlated with awareness of the environment, while age showed a negative correlation [18]. Furthermore, age, gender, education, and farm size were determinants of farmers' awareness of ecosystem services [19]. However, marital status did not correlate with the awareness of ecosystem services.…”