Work

Exploring household livelihood resilience and natural resource dependence in urban-oriented resettlement in rural China

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Urban-oriented resettlement is a key policy instrument for alleviating resource-driven livelihood constraints and fostering rural transformation and sustainable development in ecologically fragile regions. However, relocation not only changes residential locations but also alters households’ access to natural resources, livelihood capital structure, social networks, and livelihood strategy choices, leading to heterogeneous post-resettlement livelihood outcomes. Using household survey data from Ankang, Shaanxi Province, China, we develop an integrated framework coupling natural resource dependence (NRD) with household livelihood resilience (HLR) to examine how urban-oriented resettlement reconfigures this relationship. Group comparisons and multinomial logistic regression were used to examine the associations of relocation participation, voluntariness, subsidy level, and distance with HLR–NRD configuration membership. The results show that urban-oriented resettlement is associated with a significant reduction in households’ NRD, especially income and energy dependence; yet lower NRD does not consistently correspond to greater HLR. Relocation characteristics were also associated with households’ membership in different livelihood-transition configurations. These findings suggest that urban-oriented resettlement should be understood as a long-term process of livelihood-system reconstruction rather than as a one-time spatial intervention. Policy support should shift from uniform assistance toward differentiated livelihood recovery strategies based on HLR–NRD modes. This study extends household-level research on livelihood risk management and resettlement evaluation and offers empirical evidence for resettlement planning and sustainable livelihood governance in ecologically fragile regions and other developing contexts.

Source: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems

DOI: 10.3389/fsufs.2026.1948406

Authors: Ziqi Fang, Shaojun Chen, Xinyu Wu

Institutions: Hohai University, Xi'an Jiaotong University

Language: English

Topic: Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: No poverty, Sustainable cities and communities, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,353