Impact of nature reserve establishment on the subjective well-being of surrounding farmers: an analysis based on the mediating effect of farmers' ecological awareness

Tingting Zhang ^1* Guo Yuanyuan ² Dan He ³ Ke Chen ^3*

• ¹ Shenyang University, Shenyang, China
• ² Shenyang Polytechnic College, Shenyang, China
• ³ Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, Liaoning, China

Enhancing farmers' well-being is a key focus in China's "Three Rural Issues" (agriculture, rural areas, and farmers) work. Exploring the impact of nature reserve establishment on the subjective well-being of surrounding farmers is of great significance for creating a better and happier life for farmers. By constructing a theoretical framework of "Nature Reserve—Ecological Awareness— Multidimensional Well-being," and based on survey data from 1002 farmers inside and outside six nature reserves in Liaoning Province, China, this study uses benchmark regression models and mediating effect models to investigate the impact of nature reserve establishment on the multidimensional well-being of surrounding farmers. Ecological awareness includes three dimensions: ecological environment cognition, ecological value perception and ecological policy perception. The research results indicate that the establishment of nature reserves has a significant positive impact at the 5% statistical level on life satisfaction and positive emotional well-being of farmers within nature reserves, with coefficients of 0.308 and 0.164, respectively. It also has a negative impact at the 1% statistical level on negative emotional well-being, with a coefficient of -0.153. Robustness tests confirm these findings. Mediating effect analysis reveals that the ecological environment cognition does not have a statistically significant mediating effect on the well-being of farmers around nature reserves. However, the perception of ecological value has a mediating effect on life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. The perception of ecological policies of nature reserves has a mediating effect on life satisfaction but is not statistically significant for other well-being dimensions. The establishment of nature reserves can effectively enhance the life satisfaction and positive emotional well-being of surrounding farmers while inhibiting negative affect. Nature reserve management can improve farmers' multidimensional well-being by strengthening supervision, improving governance mechanisms, guiding the sense of value realization and local pride of farmers within nature reserves, and ensuring that the production and operational rights of farmers' collective forest land are not infringed upon.