What Are the Impacts of a Coastal Zone Protection Policy on Farmers’ Livelihood Capital? Empirical Analysis From the Perspective of Farmer Participation

Abstract

To restore and protect the ecosystem service function of coastal zones, some farmers have changed their certain original production methods and lifestyles and some have even relinquished a portion of the economic benefits that could be obtained directly. What impacts do the coastal zone ecological protection policies bring to the livelihoods of coastal farmers? The strict coastline protection of Beibu Gulf, Hepu County, Beihai City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, is taken as an example. Combined with the sustainable livelihood framework (SLF), this paper set up an evaluation index system for the livelihood capital of farmers in the Beibu Gulf coastal zone, obtaining 568 valid questionnaires through a field survey, and use the propensity score matching and difference-in-difference (PSM-DID) method to study the impacts of a coastal ecological protection policy on the livelihood capital of coastal farmers from the perspective of farmer participation. The results show that (1) the coastal ecological protection policy had a significant impact on the natural capital and social capital of coastal farmers that actively participated in coastal ecological protection, which increased by 0.181 and 0.052, respectively. (2) However, it did not have a significant impact on the total livelihood capital, human capital, physical capital or financial capital. Therefore, this paper presents policy suggestions for constructing coastal ecological compensation mechanisms and for promoting active participation by coastal farmers in coastal ecological protection efforts.

Family involvement and proactive tax management behaviour in private family SMEs

“…Next, with the DID method, we can control for the differences between the control and the experimental groups before and after the implementation of the policy and thus test the effect of the implementation (Donald and Lang, 2007; Roberts and Whited, 2013) and address endogeneity problems (Cerulli, 2015, p. 188). In this way, PSM-DID removes not only the unobservable and time-varying differences between groups but also any time variations, and it overcomes the fact that both treatment and control groups may show common trend assumptions in the ordinary DID model (Cheng et al. , 2021; Hu et al.…”

Land Use Scenario Simulation and Ecosystem Service Management for Different Regional Development Models of the Beibu Gulf Area, China

“…In addition, the city can focus on the development of transnational tourism and coastal leisure tourism due to the comprehensive advantages of marine tourism resources. However, the booming development of the marine economy can also cause damage to coastal ecology, so effective coastal ecological protection policies remain necessary to restore and protect the coastal ecological environment [46]. According to the "Beibu Gulf Tourism Development Plan", Qinzhou City can develop in the direction of eco-tourism on sea and land, making full use of the sensational effect of white dolphins to drive the development of it.…”

Implications of policy changes for coastal landscape patterns and sustainability in Eastern China

“…To explain the first limitation, the relationship between coastal zone policies and their impacts can be classified into four types: one-toone, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many. Existing studies mostly focus on the first two types, assessing the impact of specific coastal zone policies on one or more objects, such as the impact of marine protected area policies on biodiversity or land use functions (Cheng et al 2021;Wang et al 2022a). Many-to-one studies typically analyze the impact of multiple policies on a particular phenomenon, such as the expansion of aquaculture ponds or the restoration of wetlands (Vélez et al 2018;Lou et al, 2022).…”

“…Existing methods for assessing the impact of coastal zone policies fall into three main categories: econometric models, scenario simulations, and coupling analysis. Commonly used econometric models include input-output models (Loizou et al 2014), structural equation models (SEM) (Wang et al 2022a), and the double-difference method (DID) (Cheng et al 2021). While these models are frequently employed to assess the impact of coastal zone policies, they often overlook spatial differences and are limited to one-to-one or one-to-many policy analyses.…”