Farmers' perceptions and adaptation behaviours concerning land degradation: A theoretical framework and a case‐study in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau of China

Abstract

Land degradation through environmental pollution represents a serious threat to vulnerable populations in rural China. To better understand farmers' perceptions of land degradation and their corresponding adaptation behaviour, this paper presents a theoretical framework to explain the interactions among awareness, perception, mitigation, and adaptation, and tests the framework using a case‐study. A case‐study was conducted in Qinghai, where historical environmental pollution from a chemical plant had caused the contamination of soil, groundwater, and river water, which had negatively impacted the livelihood of local farmers. A questionnaire survey was conducted (n = 277), and the results were used to test the theoretical framework using structural equation modelling. Results indicated strong structural relationships between awareness and perceptions (r = .75, p < .01), a relatively strong relationship between mitigation and adaptation (r = .63, p = .02), and a weak relationship between perception and mitigation (r = .20, p = .54). The study results suggested that farmers were well aware of land degradation issues, but they lacked in‐depth knowledge about the situation and about sophisticated adaptation methods; therefore, they had chosen the easiest adaptation strategy‐ to avoid the degraded land. The farmers were less willing to bear significant financial costs in adaptation; however, the proportion of respondents adopting ‘moving’ as an adaptation strategy was relatively high, suggesting that farmland degradation in combination with employment opportunities in urban areas may be causing environmental displacement and accelerating urbanization. The authors of this paper recommend that policymakers should consider more than just technical factors in addressing China's environmental pollution and land degradation problems. The socio‐economic status of farmers should be a critical component in the equation, and bottom‐up empowerment adaptation behaviour should be used in combination with top‐down mitigation.

How does soil pollution risk perception affect farmers' pro-environmental behavior? The role of income level

“…Soil pollution risk perception is reflected by people's values and attitudes toward the environment (De Groot, 2018;Grasmück and Scholz, 2005). For farmers, it is the process of identifying the surrounding soil pollution caused by farming (Liu et al, 2018;Vandermoere, 2008). Therefore, the extent to which farmers are connected to local soil pollution problems plays an important role in their understanding of risks and making judgments (Weber et al, 2001).…”

“…Two popular ways of risk perception measurements are the two-dimensional view of "worry degree" and "unknown risk" proposed by Slovic (1987), and the dynamic multi-dimensional risk perception model (Langford et al, 1999). We consider the multi-dimensional characteristics of soil pollution risk (Bockarjova and Steg, 2014;Grasmück and Scholz, 2005;Liu et al, 2018;Weber et al, 2001). Based on the two main cognitive processes of "threat assessment" and "cognitive assessment" in PMT, and the two-dimensional view of Slovic (Boss et al, 2015;Slovic, 1987), we divide farmers' soil pollution risk perceptions into four dimensions: risk fact perception, risk loss perception, risk cause perception and risk response behavior ability perception.…”

Farmers’ Adaptive Behaviors to Heavy Metal-Polluted Cultivated Land in Mining Areas: The Influence of Farmers’ Characteristics and the Mediating Role of Perceptions

“…Adaptation refers to the process by which people make adjustments according to actual or expected environmental changes, and their impacts to reduce or avoid harm, or exploit beneficial opportunities [ 16 ]. With the intensification of conflicts between humans and the environment, the study of adaptive behaviors has become a frontier area and a core component of environmental change research [ 17 , 18 , 19 ].…”

Residents’ Cognition and Behavior Related to Eco-Environmental Risks from the Development of Large Coal Power Plants: A Case Study in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia

“…Based on the procedure proposed by Grothmann and Patt [33], we determined the relationship between perception and adaptive behavior. Hou and Liu [34] identified the path relationship of "cognition-perception-mitigating behavior and adaptive behavior." In this study, eco-environmental risk cognition refers to the residents' cognition of the risks from changes in the surrounding ecological environment under the influence of large-scale coal power plant development; eco-environmental risk perception refers to the residents' perception of the impacts of eco-environmental changes on their health, daily life, incomes, and other personal aspects after the eco-environmental changes; mitigating behavior refers to the behavior adopted by residents to mitigate eco-environmental risks after the eco-environmental changes; adaptive behavior refers to the behavior adopted by residents to cope with changes in the ecological environment.…”