Analysis on the choice of livelihood strategy for peasant households renting out farmland: Evidence fromwestern poverty-stricken areas in China

Abstract

Investigating the choice of livelihood strategies has great significance for improving the living standards of peasant households who rent out farmland. This study evaluates the impact of renting-out land on households' livelihood strategies in China's western poverty-stricken areas. Data were obtained from cross sectional survey of 585 field survey data from peasant households who rent out land. The K-means clustering method was used to classify the livelihood strategies of the sample households. In view of sustainable livelihood framework, this paper used combination weighting model based on game theory to calculate the quo of households' livelihood capital. The Multinomial Logistic Regression was used to explore the relationship between livelihood capitals and livelihood strategies. Results show that: livelihood strategy of households who rent out the land can be divided into "agricultural-led" livelihood strategy, "working-oriented" livelihood strategy and "part-time" livelihood strategy. Additionally, the results of Multinomial Logistic Regression show that the households with high human capital and financial capital tend to choose the "working-oriented" livelihood strategy and the households with high natural capital tend to choose the "agricultural-led" livelihood strategy. Therefore, in order to realize the sustainable livelihood of these households, different policy support should be proposed based on the heterogeneity of households in the process of land transfer.