Evaluation and influencing factors of farmers’ sustainable livelihood response to ecocultural tourism in minority areas of China

Abstract

Ecocultural tourism plays an crucial role in promoting poverty reduction and farmers’ sustainable livelihood enhancement worldwide, which has attracted strong attention from scholars and society. However, the impact of ecological and cultural capital of farmers’ sustainable livelihoods have not been yet fully investigated. This paper modifies the sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF) and emphasizes the effects of ecological and cultural capital on farmers’ sustainable livelihoods. The modified SLF can be used as a possible theoretical model to comprehensively characterize farmers’ sustainable livelihoods in tourism destinations with rich ecological and cultural resources. By constructing an evaluation index system, principle component analysis and multiple linear regression are used to analyze the types and response levels of farmers’ sustainable livelihoods to ecocultural tourism and determine the factors influencing this response. The results show that farmers’ sustainable livelihood responses to ecocultural tourism can be classified into six types. The overall response values are low, and the responses are ranked by the degree of response in descending order as complete response, balanced development, cultural network, ecology-dominant, developmental delay, and resource advantage response. Farmers’ sustainable livelihoods respond strongly to cultural capital and ecological capital factors and relatively weakly to physical, natural, social, financial, and labor capital. Five main factors that influence farmers’ sustainable livelihood responses are then identified. Finally, strategies and suggestions for livelihood transformation, strategy selection, and improvement are proposed. This study provides case study examples for promoting the sustainable development of ecocultural tourism sites and improving farmers’ livelihoods in China and worldwide.

Evaluation of rural ecological resilience from the perspective of communities and farmers: a study on Laochehe ethnic minority village in China

“…This framework offers a systematic approach for human societies to recognize and utilize natural resources. However, the SES framework overlooks the significant role of cultural factors within rural social-ecological systems, particularly those in tourism-oriented rural and ethnic areas (Wu et al 2022).…”

“…Second, rural tourism provides diversified livelihood opportunities, and farmers transform their livelihoods by proactively adapting to tourism disruptions. Finally, tourism development influences rural cultural and changes farmers' livelihoods, which contributes to the formation of new governance systems (Wu et al 2022, Xiao et al 2023. As a result, tourism development significantly impacts both the rural community level and the farmer level, and contributes to the dynamic evolution of ecological resilience in tourism villages.…”

“…Second, some members not involved in rural tourism were randomly selected to be surveyed, aim to explore the differential characteristics of ecological resilience among different types of farmers, for a total of 37 questionnaires distributed. The researchers also lived in the village to understand the daily livelihood activities and behaviors of the farming households via nonparticipatory observation (Wu et al 2022), the purpose of which was to capture the cultural values of the village and the process of village governance. There are a total of 419 farm households in Laochehe Village, and the field research yielded questionnaires from 140 farm households.…”

“…Their participation in rural tourism is limited, leading to their exclusion from the rural governance system. Moreover, some migrant-oriented farmers harbor a negative attitude toward tourism development (Wu et al 2022).…”

Evaluation of sustainable livelihood of reservoir resettlement based on the fuzzy matter-element model

“…According to Zhou Li and Li Hongmei, human capital investment has provided important support for the relocation of farmers, enabling them to change from a traditional agricultural business model to a more flexible non-agricultural business model, therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the relevant education and training, improve the quality of the population, achieve effective use of resources, better development of local industries (Zhou et al, 2021). Jilin Wu and others found that farmers' sustainable livelihoods respond strongly to eco-cultural capital factors, and put forward livelihood transformation, strategic choice and improvement strategies and suggestions (Wu et al, 2023). In addition, latestage support is a special policy to improve the livelihood of migrants, and the key to guarantee the rights of migrants is to adjust the policy appropriately (Zhao et al, 2019).…”