Impact of farmer households’ livelihood assets on their options of economic compensation patterns for cultivated land protection

With rapid urbanization and the socio-economic transformation, cultivated land protection has gradually become a major concern in China. The economic compensation plays a crucial role in promoting cultivated land protection and improving the utilization ratio of cultivated land. Farmer household’s satisfaction has a great influence on the effectiveness of compensation. Therefore, households’ willingness to select the economic compensation pattern for cultivated land protection has been considered and re-examined. By employing Participatory Rural Appraisal method (PRA), 3 villages and 392 households were investigated and sampled in mesa and hilly areas of Chongqing. Then a quantitative analysis framework of household livelihood hexagon has been developed to quantify the livelihood assets of different farmer households. Finally, the Gray Relation Model and Probit Regression Model have been employed to explore the coupling relationship between the household livelihood assets and their compensation pattern options. The results show that there are both qualitative and spatial heterogeneity in household livelihood assets. We found that the inequality of livelihood assets is evident for five household types. There is a spatial trend that the higher the elevation, the less livelihood assets are. In addition, their options of economic compensation pattern vary from Chengdu Pattern to Foshan Pattern due to their difference in livelihood assets and difference in location. In detail, there is a coupling relationship between household livelihood assets and their compensation pattern; negative correlation is observed between natural assets value and household pattern options, while the other livelihood assets have positive impacts on compensation pattern in varying degrees, which from the top are psychological assets, human assets, physical assets, financial assets, and social assets respectively. A conceptual compensation pattern system has been designed to meet the demands for farmer households mainly according to their shortage in livelihood assets. In addition, compensation method, compensation standard, the basis of compensation and the source of compensation funds have been proposed accordingly.