Study on Livelihood Resilience of Rural Residents under the Rural Revitalization Strategy in Ethnic Areas of Western Sichuan, China

Abstract

Ethnic areas are special in terms of their geographic type, population size, production mode, etc. Scientific assessment of rural residents’ livelihood resilience and exploration of its influencing factors are significant for tapping the potential of rural residents’ livelihood resilience and promoting sustainable rural development. This research takes the villages in the western Sichuan ethnic area as the study area and, based on the sustainable livelihood framework and the analysis framework of rural residents’ livelihood resilience, constructs an evaluation index system of rural residents’ livelihood resilience and explores the factors affecting its evolution using the OLS parameter estimation method. The results found that: (1) Annual per capita income and livelihood diversification of key livelihood factors of farm households have improved under the rural revitalization strategy. (2) Skill training opportunities, loan opportunities, living conditions, non-agricultural work experience, and traffic accessibility had the most significant impact on livelihood resilience, and were the dominant forces in enhancing the rural residents’ livelihood resilience. (3) There was a divergence of livelihood resilience among different types of rural residents, and those with low altitude, low dependency ratio, strong labor endowment, and high literacy had a higher livelihood resilience; furthermore, the mean value of livelihood resilience of tourism-led rural residents was higher than that of non-tourism-led rural residents under different livelihood strategies.