Abstract
Land use/land cover change will have a certain impact on the regional ecological environment. This study uses the questionnaire survey method, an opportunity cost method and a logistic model to evaluate the suitability of an ecological compensation standard for a winter- wheat-fallow cropping system in a groundwater funnel area in Hebei. The main factors affecting farmers’ willingness to fallow fields provide a theoretical basis for scientifically and rationally developing a rotation policy in the groundwater funnel area. The results indicate the following: (1) nearly 87% of the surveyed farmers would accept a winter-wheat-fallow policy, whereas 13% would not; (2) farmer educational level, the total number of participants in the agricultural labor force, dependency rate, farmers’ attitudes toward a winter wheat-fallow policy in the groundwater funnel area and the farmer level of trust in government policy have significant positive effects farmer intention to fallow, whereas the number of days of participation in farming, the cultivated land quality and the per capita area of cultivated land have a significant negative effect on farmers’ fallowing intentions; (3) considering only the impact of winter wheat on groundwater, the proposed compensation standard for farmers who accept the policy is 0.00095 $/hm2; (4) some policy implications are put forward to improve the effectiveness of the winter wheat fallowing policy in the groundwater funnel.
Highlights
Land use/ land cover change will have a certain impact on the regional ecological environment [1]
Ecological compensation [13] refers to the preservation and restoration of ecosystems, ecological function or ecological value, in a certain ecological function area; this compensation is provided for a special population of farmers who abandon production in some areas to bring economic losses
The ecological compensation standard for winter-wheat fallow was estimated to be 0.0009 $/hm2; this value was determined with insufficient scientific basis
Summary
Land use/ land cover change will have a certain impact on the regional ecological environment [1]. Several factors influence winter-wheat fallow, including farmer personal characteristics, family and production and management characteristics, cultivated land state, and farmer response to the national policy system Discussing these factors and the ecological compensation standards is of great theoretical and practical value for China to scientifically and reasonably implement rotation and fallow systems in the groundwater funnel area. The main contributions of this paper are as follows It analyzes the factors influencing farmers’ willingness via a logistic model, the results of which can provide a theoretical basis for the development of a reasonable fallowing system for cultivated land in China. It uses data collected directly from individual farmer households, which increases the robustness of the results
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