Analysis Of The Factors Influencing Farmer's Participation In Forestation--An Case Study Of Yueyang County In Hunan Province

With the increasing worldwide awareness of the global environment, forests are getting more and more attentions than ever before. Forests are one of the very important natural resources and also the main constitution of continental ecological system, which cause a large number of direct and indirect effects.Farmers are the main player in the activities of forestation and forest management. Now more and more social researches found that without real participation of farmers, both sustainable forestry and sustainable rural development would be baselessWith the above 2 points in mind, the study intended to identify main factors influencing farmers' participation and then to come up with corresponding measures on how to improve farmers' interests in forestry. Hence 2 hilly villages and 1 mountainous village in Yueyang County, Hunan Province, were selected purposely as research area. 130 farmers were interviewed by using one questionnaire and 7 households were selected for case study and interviewed. The main findings of the research are as follows regarding the influential factors in farmers' participation in afforestation:1) Economic factors are the main decisive factors influencing farmers' participation in afforestation. It was found during farmers' decision-making process in afforestation, the first thing that farmers would take in account is whether they will benefit from the activity. When farmers' main economic income source is either forests or forestry land, their interests in participating forestation usually are higher relatively. This point is very important and it should be the base and starting point for decision-making.2) Outside interventions are very influential as well. It was found that outside interventions are very important. Here the interventions refer to not only economic intervention, but also other non-economic interventions like measures targeting at facilitating landuse right transferring, favorable forestry taxation and fee policy, reasonable relaxation of cutting quota system.3) Farmers' individual social-economic characteristics are of influence to some extent. This research found that age, alternative employment opportunity, educational background, attitude towards life are very influential in the study area.Based on the above findings, the author proposed 6 recommendations to improve farmers' interests in afforestation and for better governmental service.