Adaptive strategy of peasant households and its influencing factors under the grazing prohibition policy in yanchi county, ningxia hui autonomous region
Grassland ecosystems play an important role in human society, providing a large number of livestock products and plant resources for economic development, and also the basic production and living materials to farmers and herdsmen. Moreover, grassland ecosystems provide many ecosystem service functions. Accordingly, grassland ecosystems have both economic and ecological value, and are recognized as strategic economic, social, and ecological resources. However, grassland ecosystems have been degraded as a consequence of climate change and human activities. Located in the existing farming-pastoral transitional zone,Yanchi County implemented a grazing prohibition policy on November 1,2002 to deal with grassland ecosystem destruction. Through 10 years of efforts, the grazing prohibition policy has achieved a certain effect. Peasant households are the main participants in grazing prohibition policy ; their adaptive behavior affects not only living standards but also the performance of the policy and the sustainable development of the social economy. The adaptive strategies of peasant households include all types of adaptive change,particularly the change of livelihood to deal with the interventions. We obtained data from field investigations, and compared the change in household livelihood and the grazing and cultivation situation at the beginning of the grazing prohibition policy and 10 years after its implementation. The peasant household capital was designed as an independent variable,and Logistic regression models was used to identify the factors that affected the changes in peasant households' adaptive strategies,including the change in peasant households' livelihood diversity,scale of grazing,and grazing methods. The results showed the following. (1) The current household adaptive strategies include a preliminary non-agriculture tendency of their livelihood, an increase in livelihood diversity,and a decrease in the farming scale. The adjustment of peasant household production structure includes an increase in food crop planting area,a decrease in the economic crop planting area, and an increase in grazing cost. (2) Peasant household livelihood capital level has important effects on their adaptive strategies: the main factors that influence farmers' livelihood diversity are human capital,financial capital,and social capital ; The factors influencing the change in farming scale mainly include natural capital,physical capital,financial capital, and social capital,and the factors affecting breeding method selection are physical capital and financial capital.