Follow-up supportive policies and risk perception influence livelihood adaptation of anti-poverty relocated households in ethnic mountains of southwest China

Abstract

The poverty alleviation relocation program (PAR) is a milestone project in breaking spatial poverty traps in ethnic mountainous regions and provides a key solution for eradicating global absolute poverty. As direct participants in the restructuring of environmental and livelihood systems, the livelihood adaptation of relocated households is fundamental to the sustainable development of human-land systems in resettlement sites and the consolidation of the success of poverty alleviation. This research constructs an adaptive integration analysis framework of “external disturbance-adaptation process-adaptation outcome”, by utilizing questionnaire data from relocated households in the Liangshan Yi minority area of Southwest China, and employing a formative structural equation model to investigate the transmission mechanisms and heterogeneous effects of PAR on livelihood adaptation across different resettlement characteristics. The results indicate that: (1) External disturbance of PAR facilitates positive adaptation outcomes, with follow-up supportive policy as the most significant determinant, which contributes directly to adaptation outcomes and indirectly through improved learning and self-organization capacity. Conversely, risk perception has a negative impact on adaptation outcomes and further exacerbates adverse impacts by reducing buffering capacity. (2) The pathways influencing subjective and objective adaptation outcomes demonstrate heterogeneity. PAR has a positive impact on subjective adaptation, but a non-significant effect on objective adaptation, self-organization capacity and buffering capacity are the most important direct drivers and mediating variables affecting both, respectively. (3) Resettlement characteristics exert a moderating effect on livelihood adaptation. The positive effect of follow-up supportive policy on learning capacity and the marginal contribution of learning capacity to adaptative strategies being greater in mid-to-long-term resettlements. Buffering capacity of village resettlements and subjective adaptation of town resettlements are more beneficial from follow-up supportive policy.