Understanding the Effects of China's Agro-Environmental Policies on Rural Households' Labor and Land Allocation with a Spatially Explicit Agent-Based Model.

Ying Wang,Conghe Song,Qi Zhang,Shiqi Tao,Richard Bilsborrow,Srikanta Sannigrahi,Qirui Li,Jiangfeng Li

doi:10.18564/jasss.4589

Abstract

Understanding household labor and land allocation decisions under agro-environmental policies is challenging due to complex human-environment interactions. Here, we develop a spatially explicit agent-based model based on spatial and socioeconomic data to simulate households' land and labor allocation decisions and investigate the impacts of two forest restoration and conservation programs and one agricultural subsidy program in rural China. Simulation outputs reveal that the forest restoration program accelerates labor out-migration and cropland shrink, while the forest conservation program promotes livelihood diversification via increasing non-farm employment. Meanwhile, the agricultural subsidy program keeps labor for cultivation on land parcels with good quality, but appears less effective for preventing marginal croplands from being abandoned. The policy effects on labor allocation substantially differ between rules based on bounded rational and empirical knowledge of defining household decisions, particularly on sending labor out-migrants and engaging in local off-farm jobs. Land use patterns show that the extent to which households pursue economic benefits through shrinking cultivated land is generally greater under bounded rationality than empirical knowledge. Findings demonstrate nonlinear social-ecological impacts of the agro-environmental policies through time, which can deviate from expectations due to complex interplays between households and land. This study also suggests that the spatial agent-based model can represent adaptive decision-making and interactions of human agents and their interactions in dynamic social and physical environments.

Highlights

We explore how the CNH systems evolve under two contrasting human behavior rules, i.e., the bounded rationality (BR) and empirical knowledge (EK), as a ected by the agro-environmental policies
Each working age adult makes labor allocation decisions to maximize the expected economic return from employment conditioned by household livelihood capitals
Regarding the mean per capita income, people are expected to earn more under the BR rule than EK rule, and the gap widens over time

Summary

Introduction

. Humans are modifying the earth’s land surface at an alarming rate to meet their livelihood needs, such as agricultural intensification and extensification for food production, deforestation and forest degradation with the overuse of forest resources, and overgrazing for livestock uses (Delgado-Aguilar et al ; Foley et al ). China’s fast economic growth was achieved at the expense of the environment, accompanying increasing frequency and intensity of human-caused disasters (Liu & Diamond ), such as the severe droughts and floods in and , respectively (Piao et al ; Song et al ) These disasters could be attributed to the long-term degradation of soil water holding capacity, while farmers are highly vulnerable to these disasters due to their limited coping capacity.

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