IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nathum/v6y2022i9d10.1038_s41562-022-01401-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Socio-economic impacts of scaling back a massive payments for ecosystem services programme in China

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Howell

    (Arizona State University)

Abstract

This paper examines the socio-economic implications of scaling back China’s Sloping Land Conversion Programme (SLCP), one of the world’s largest payments for ecosystem services programmes. Using the consolidation phase of SLCP as a natural experiment, a staggered difference-in-differences design is applied to a panel of rural villages (and households) located in poor and ecologically fragile areas. SLCP consolidation, consisting of a 50% subsidy reduction and suspension of a job training programme, leads to larger income declines in treated villages driven by a reduction in the likelihood that SLCP households transition from farm to non-farm work. These harmful socio-economic effects disappear, however, in villages with stronger land rights and more job training prior to consolidation. When these favourable site-specific characteristics exist, SLCP households remain equally engaged in off-farm work even after subsidy payments and training resources are scaled back. Moreover, on aggregate, village income losses are no longer detectable. The findings provide partial support in favour of the behavioural permanence thesis, highlighting the important role of prevailing local characteristics in mitigating harmful development effects otherwise brought about by programme roll-back.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Howell, 2022. "Socio-economic impacts of scaling back a massive payments for ecosystem services programme in China," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(9), pages 1218-1225, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:6:y:2022:i:9:d:10.1038_s41562-022-01401-y
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01401-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01401-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41562-022-01401-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Beichen Ge & Congjin Wang & Yuhong Song, 2023. "Ecosystem Services Research in Rural Areas: A Systematic Review Based on Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-18, March.
    2. Luqian Li & Xiaobo Hua & Guangshuai Zhao & Erqi Xu, 2024. "Continuous Decline in Direct Incomes for Farmers Threatens the Sustainability of the Grain for Green Project," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-13, August.
    3. Yicheng Wang & Peng Qin & Shimei Li & Ruidong Wu, 2023. "Schoolchildren in China’s Protected Areas from a Sustainability Perspective: A Preliminary Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-12, June.
    4. Gallemore, Caleb & Pham, Thu Thuy & Hamilton, Matthew & Munroe, Darla K., 2024. "Vietnam's Payments for Forest Ecosystem Services scheme's puzzling role in protecting longstanding forests as deforestation rates rise," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:6:y:2022:i:9:d:10.1038_s41562-022-01401-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.