Citation

Peng L, Tan J, Deng W, Liu Y. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020; 17(4): e1226.

Affiliation

Key Laboratory of Land Resources Evaluation and Monitoring in Southwest, Ministry of Education, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu 610101, China.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph17041226

PMID

32074990

Abstract

Adjusting farming strategies are adaptive behaviors to cope with hazard risks. However, few studies have studied rural and remote mountain areas in China with little known about "farmers' adaptation under the impact of geo-hazards". Unlike traditional farmers' behavioral adaptation studies, in this study, we focused on the resilience of farmers' behavioral mechanisms to address local hazards such as geo-hazards. Our data were acquired through questionnaire responses (N = 516) in mountainous hazard-prone areas in Chongqing, China. The binary logit model and multinomial logit model were used to investigate the obstacles to different farming strategies and the determinants of adaptation strategy choice, focusing on the effects of disaster experience and social support on the adaptation strategy resilience. The results show that the most common adaptation strategy was adjusting crop varieties, and the largest adaptation obstacle was a lack of funds. Additionally, the age of the smallholder, farming acreage, agricultural income, social support, and disaster experience significantly increased the possibility of farmers adjusting their agricultural production. Of these, smallholder agricultural income, state disaster subsidy, the presence of disaster prevention construction, the smallholder's property, and the presence of disaster-caused crop loss experience were the most important factors affecting a farmer's adaptation strategy. In particular, farmers were more sensitive to disaster-caused property loss than to disaster-caused crop loss. This study can provide implications for the government to formulate disaster mitigation measures and for farming strategies at the smallholder level.

Language: en

Keywords

China; Chongqing; adaptability; farming strategies; geo-hazards