Natural Disasters, Public Policies, Family Characteristics, or Livelihood Assets? The Driving Factors of Farmers’ Livelihood Strategy Choices in a Nature Reserve

Abstract

Based on the summarization of previous studies, this paper constructed an analytical model on the driving factors on the choice of farmers’ livelihood strategies in nature reserves, covering the aspects of natural disasters, public policies, family characteristics, and livelihood assets, and this paper took Zhagana Village in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau as an example to conduct an empirical study. The empirical results show that non-agricultural production strategies, especially a tourism-oriented strategy, are currently the primary livelihood preference for households in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. During the process of livelihood strategy selection, households are influenced by exogenous factors like public policies and natural disasters, as well as by endogenous factors like family characteristics and livelihood assets. Among these factors, the soil erosion as well as the tourism development policy would be the restrictive factors when choosing an agricultural production strategy, or the incentive factors if a non-agricultural production strategy were to be chosen. Meanwhile, anti-poverty development policy, location characteristic, and economic characteristic are the incentive factors for households who want to choose an agricultural production strategy, or the restrictive factors if they would like to select a non-agricultural production strategy.

Coupled effect of climate change and human activities on the restoration/degradation of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau grassland

“…Tourism brings income to the local government so that they will have funds for grassland restoration and construction. Furthermore, tourism is a new means to make a living for several residents (Yang et al, 2019); hence, the problem of overgrazing is alleviated to a certain extent. The direction of the future development of QTP is how to manage the tourism in QTP so that it can improve the economic conditions of local residents and local governments and contribute to the protection of grassland ecosystems.…”

Assessing the spatial-temporal patterns of conflicts between humans and Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus) around the Gaoligongshan Nature Reserve, China

“…However, villagers around GNNR mainly depend on agriculture, leading to frequent human-bear encounters due to the attraction of agricultural products (Kirby et al, 2016). Additionally, China significantly have improved forest and rural livelihoods in recent decades (Ma et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2019), which may change the environment and human-bear interactions. A thorough understanding of HBC is the basis for identifying effective policies and measures to promote long-term human-bear coexistence.…”

Impact of Conservation Policies on Households’ Deforestation Decisions in Protected and Open-Access Forests: Cases of Moribane Forest Reserve and Serra Chôa, Mozambique

“…The availability and quality of assets determine how natural resources are used and their impact on the environment (Wunder et al, 2014). In addition, external factors such as institutions, economic factors, different policies, and cultural factors influence the assets (Yang et al, 2019). We divided the values by root mean square for standardization purposes to run a regression model and better compare the effects of each independent variable (Pir Bavaghar, 2015).…”