The Impact of Farming Households’ Livelihood Vulnerability on the Intention of Homestead Agglomeration: The Case of Zhongyi Township, China

Abstract

It is important to clarify the impact of livelihood vulnerability level on farmers’ willingness to cluster their homesteads in order to promote the intensive use of homesteads and rural revitalization. This paper constructs a framework for the influence of farmers’ livelihood vulnerability on their intention of homestead agglomeration, then assesses the livelihood vulnerability of farmers based on 211 questionnaire data points, and analyzes the influence of farmers’ livelihood vulnerability on their intention of homestead agglomeration through binary logistic regression. The results showed that the vulnerability of farmers’ livelihoods had a significant negative effect on the intention of homestead agglomeration, and the more vulnerable farmers’ livelihoods were, the more significant their tendency to gather residential land. In addition, from the three-dimensional perspective of “exposure-sensitivity-adaptability”, exposure and sensitivity have a negative effect on farmers’ intention to agglomerate, while adaptability has a significant positive effect. Therefore, this paper argues that the vulnerability of farmers’ livelihoods can be improved by reducing exposure and sensitivity and increasing adaptive capacity to enhance farmers’ willingness to cluster their homesteads, thus providing some theoretical support for the preliminary work of homestead layout optimization in rural spatial governance.

Keywords

• livelihood vulnerability
• homestead agglomeration
• farmers’ willingness
• binary logistic regression
• Zhongyi Township