The environmental impact assessment of China’s ecological migration from a social–ecological perspective
- Resource Type
- Original Paper
- Authors
- Wu, Tianjing; Liu, Yanxu; Qi, Xinhua; Zhang, Qing; Yao, Ying; Wu, Jincheng
- Source
- Ambio: A Journal of Environment and Society. :1-12
- Subject
- Difference-in-differences model
Ecological restoration
Greenness
Landscape scale
Perception
The Qilian Mountains
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 0044-7447
1654-7209
When accounting for the social–ecological impact of an ecological restoration program, both objective environmental contexts and people’s subjective perceptions are required. While this kind of environmental impact assessment lacks a comprehensive perspective. We use the difference-in-differences model to evaluate the effect of the greenness of the landscape after ecological migration in the Qilian Mountains in China; and analysis of variance and fixed effects models are used to evaluate the effects of such ecological restoration programs on local people’s perceptions. The results show that the ecological migration program in the Qilian Mountains has been successful at not only significantly improving remotely sensed greenness at the landscape scale, but also at enhancing immigrants’ environmental perceptions. These findings demonstrate the environmental impacts of ecological migration from a social–ecological perspective, and can provide methodological implications for landscape planning to support a better understanding of ecological restoration programs in the drylands.