The impact of rural households' concurrent business behaviors response on the housing land-use pattern in poor mountain area:Based on a survey of 568 households in Yunyang County, Chongqing

Abstract

The rural households have been increasingly taking part in diverse production activities apart from farming in poor mountain areas,which has a great impact on their land-use activities.Taking Yunyang County of Chongqing as a case study,we employed a Participatory Rural Appraisal method to investigate randomly selected 568 households and analyzed the spatial distribution of their rural housing land by using a landscape pattern analysis.The results show that the concurrent business level of rural households was high in Yunyang County.First,according to the ratio of off-farm income to the total income and the proportion of off-farm workforce inputs,we classified rural households into five groups: full-farm,farm-dominated,half-farm,non-farm-dominated and non-farm households.We find that the lower proportion of the elderly or women the households have and the higher education they get,the higher concurrent business level they will be.However,households with multiple divisions of work and a big family size tend to be at the middle stage of concurrent business.Of full-farm and farm-dominated households,the housing land area per family is relatively high,about 180 m2,which indicates extensive landuse utilization.Compared with the farm-dominated households,full-farm households themselves used a large proportion of land for rearing livestock and storing groceries except for housing.The residential land of half-farm households increases by approximately 190 m2 per family,indicating a relatively intensive and less diverse residential land use.For half-farm households,they reduce the land of storing and increase the land of living to enlarge their housing land.As for non-farm-dominated and non-farm households who almost drop all their farming activities,the residential land area per family tends to be lessened,about 160 to 130 m2,which means a more intensive but a less diverse land use pattern.The causes are that the land used for agricultural production decreases,and the decreased land of producing is less than the expanded land of living.As a consequence,the study suggests that the adjustment or arrangement of housing land should be fit to the concurrent business needs of households.