Effects of Value Perception, Environmental Regulation and Their Interaction on the Improvement of Herdsmen’s Grassland Ecological Policy Satisfaction

Abstract

Sustainable utilization of grassland resources was an important topic concerned by worldwide countries and regions, and ecological compensation had gradually become the main policy tool for grassland environmental management and ecological protection. This study adopted face-to-face interviews and questionnaires, and multiordered Logit model was then used to explore herdsmen’s satisfaction with Grassland Ecological Conservation Subsidy and Reward Policy (GECSRP) focusing on identifying the key factors behind it. Results showed that herdsmen were not satisfied with GECSRP on the whole, while value perception, environmental regulation and their interaction played a positive role on improving the satisfaction. Specifically, economic benefits had the strongest promotion impacts, followed by social identity in the two-dimensional variables of value perception. The guiding regulation had stronger promoting impacts, followed by the incentive regulation in the two-dimensional variables of environmental regulation. Interestingly, incentive regulation played an enhanced interaction on the influence of economic benefits and environmental value on herdsmen’s satisfaction, yet the interaction between guiding regulation and environmental value was not significant. These indicated that herdsmen paid more attention to substantial subsidies and rewards in the process of ecological livestock husbandry, and environmental regulation formulated by government had a phenomenon of “relative system failure”. Thus, the grassland ecological environment policy should be further adjusted and improved to promote the economic development of pastoral areas.

Impacts of Risk Perception and Environmental Regulation on Farmers’ Sustainable Behaviors of Agricultural Green Production in China

“…This is basically consistent with the conclusions of Teklewold et al (2013) [41], Ren et al (2018) [47] and Dessart et al (2019) [48]. Because the stronger the government regulates farmers' pesticide abuse, litter and other behaviors through supervision and punishment, the more it can promote farmers to move closer to the restrictive regulation goal [45]. In addition, effective publicity and training, promotion and demonstration can make farmers gradually realize the economic value and environmental benefits of AGP behaviors, so as to guide farmers to adjust and standardize their production behaviors according to the requirements of green regulation [49,50].…”

“…For the analysis of the moderating effect, this study adds the moderating variable and the product term of the moderating variable and core explanatory variable into Equation (1); that is, the product of the total index of environmental regulation and the total index of risk perception [39,45]. The equation of the specific model is shown in Equation (2):…”

“…In order to test the robustness of the estimated results, this study, referring to the research methods of Gong et al (2016) [23] and [45], tests the robustness of the regression results in Sections 3.1 and 3.2 by deleting the sample data with too old and too young ages. To be specific, the elderly samples >60 years old and adolescents <18 years old are deleted from 652 samples, and Logit model is used for regression to test the robustness of the above results.…”

Tibetan Herders’ Life Satisfaction and Determinants under the Pastureland Rehabilitation Program: A Case Study of Maduo County, China

“…In the implementation area of the PRP, such as Ningxia, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, and other places, many studies have focused on the satisfaction of herders with individual measures such as ecological compensation and grazing prohibition. The results have showed that the policy satisfaction of herders and influencing factors in different regions were different [21,22]. When considering the influencing factors, scholars tend to choose variables from personal characteristics, family capital, environmental factors, policy perception and so on.…”

“…The policy support and the adaptability of herders jointly determine the impact of the PRP on the overall wellbeing of herders' families, and the loss of well-being often leads to many illegal grazing behaviors, such as grazing in grazing-prohibited areas or times, or maintaining a number of livestock exceeding the specified standard [19,20]. Ensuring the well-being of herders is considered to be a solution to alleviate the contradictions between herders and government and promote ecological protection [21,22].…”