Tibetan Herders’ Life Satisfaction and Determinants under the Pastureland Rehabilitation Program: A Case Study of Maduo County, China

Cuizhen Xia,Ya Wang,Lihua Zhou,Xiaodong Pei

doi:10.3390/su14042381

Abstract

The Pastureland Rehabilitation Program (PRP) has been implemented for nearly 20 years, and the lives of herders in different regions have been affected to varying degrees. The level of people’s well-being could measure the success of policy. Taking Maduo County as an example, the life satisfaction of 266 Tibetan herders was investigated through a participatory questionnaire survey in July 2021. Multiple linear regression and optimal scale regression were constructed to analyze the impact of the satisfaction of different aspects of life and PRP on life satisfaction, respectively. The results show that the herders in Maduo County had relative high satisfaction in various aspects of life and overall life, and leisure and consumption were important aspects influencing life satisfaction. The relative living standard, the difficulty in borrowing and the quality of government services had a significant positive impact on herders’ life satisfaction. Occupation and migration location also led to the significant differences of life satisfaction. However, the income changes caused by PRP and subsidy levels did not show a significant impact. We discussed the particularity of Maduo County and suggested that more attention should be paid to the improvement of the social environment such as wealth disparity, channels of assistance, working environment, and the effective assistance formulated according to the demands of different groups needs to be optimized continuously, so as to enhance the self-development ability of herders.

Highlights

Published: 19 February 2022The pursuit of well-being is as old as human history [1]
How to properly resettle local herders and ensure their livelihood has become a key issue that the government must consider. It has been nearly 20 years since the project was implemented; what is the living condition of the herders in the area, and is their well-being guaranteed? What other changes can the government make to improve well-being? With Maduo County, the source of the Yellow River, as a typical area, we investigated the satisfaction of local herders in various aspects of life and overall life satisfaction through field research, and used the multiple linear regression and optimal scale regression models to analyze the determinants of life satisfaction
The households with a large number of livestock accounted for only 8.64% of the surveyed samples, and most households did not have livestock. One reason for this result may be that many herders have abandoned livestock breeding or converted their livestock into cooperative as shares after the large-scale grazing prohibition in Maduo County; the other one may be that the time of the survey coincided with herders who had a large number of livestock moving to a remote summer pasture, making it difficult to find more samples

Summary

Introduction

Life satisfaction is one of the most important human values [2], an important part of subjective well-being [3,4], and a powerful supplement to the evaluation of an individual’s actual state in addition to objective economic and social indicators [5,6]. Individual well-being today has been regarded as an indicator of social progress [8,9], and using people’s self-reported life satisfaction to assess the effectiveness of governance has been prevalent around the world [10,11]. Many studies have shown that in addition to people’s own characteristics, social and economic factors can affect well-being, which may be influenced by policy makers [9]

Methods

Results

Conclusion