Household Livelihood Strategies and Dependence on Agriculture in the Mountainous Settlements in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China

Sustainability

Dingde Xu¹  Jifei Zhang¹  Golam Rasul²  Shaoquan Liu¹  Fangting Xie¹  Mengtian Cao¹  Enlai Liu¹ 

[1] Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences & Ministry of Water Conservancy, #9, Block 4, Renminnan Road, Chengdu 610041, China; E-Mails:;International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Khumaltar, G.P.O. Box 3226, Lalitpur, Kathmandu 44700, Nepal; E-Mail:

关键词: farmers’ sustainable livelihood;    agricultural collection;    ordinal logistic regression model;    rural households;    China;   

DOI  :  10.3390/su7054850

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

This study explores the extent to which farmers in the Three Gorges Reservoir area remain highly dependent on agriculture despite rapid urbanization and industrialization. The study focuses on the factors that determine a household’s choice of livelihood strategy, with a particular focus on the production of and dependence on agricultural products. Using a sustainable livelihoods approach and survey data from farmers in the Three Gorges Reservoir area in China, the study provides a descriptive statistical analysis and ordinal logistic regression model that shows that close to 56% of households exhibit a low dependence on agriculture. The following variables had a significant influence on livelihood strategy: the maximum years of education of any household member; the age of the household head; the number of laborers in a household; household location; and formal and informal social networks. Regardless of whether the household had children, house value and fixed assets had no significant influence on livelihood strategy. According to the analysis results, we put forward the suggestions that government departments increase investment in infrastructure and make loan policies more favorable for farmers so as to encourage rural able-person to use their social networks to actively establish businesses at migrant destinations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.