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

Lun Yang, Moucheng Liu and Qingwen Min
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Lun Yang: Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 11A, Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Beijing 100101, China
Moucheng Liu: Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 11A, Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Beijing 100101, China
Qingwen Min: Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 11A, Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Beijing 100101, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 19, 1-18

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.

Keywords: sustainable development; globally important agricultural heritage systems; pressure-state-response; SUR model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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