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Livelihood capital is the core element of sustainable livelihood development for rural households. Based on the survey data of 615 growers in the main rubber-producing areas of Hainan and Yunnan province, this paper constructs an evaluation system of rubber growers' livelihood capital within the sustainable livelihood analysis framework and calculates key indicators, such as farmers' livelihood capital index, livelihood activity diversity index, and household income diversity index. The multiple regression model and the mediating effect model are used to explore the influence mechanism of livelihood capital on the sustainable livelihood of rural households. The following three conclusions are drawn: (1) The accumulation of livelihood capital of rural households is conducive to enriching the structure of household livelihood activities and income sources, especially the accumulation of financial capital, which is more likely to improve the diversity of household livelihood activities. Regional differences exist in the impact of livelihood capital structures on rural household livelihood outcomes. Natural capital endowment has a significant effect on the income diversification level in Hainan, but there may be a "curse" effect in Yunnan. (2) Geographical characteristics, production decisions, and farming household characteristics significantly impact sustainable livelihoods. The altitude of the village and the distance from the county seat pose certain challenges for farmers in diversifying their livelihoods. Although the law of rubber tapping production may weaken farmers' production and business activities, it can better stabilize farmers' incomes owing to its strong flexibility in labor arrangements, which may be beneficial for diversifying livelihoods; however, it does not necessarily lead to diversified incomes. While the characteristics of poor households can help rural households gain policy support, building capacity is the key to achieving a sustainable livelihood. (3) There are intermediary effects of livelihood capital on livelihood activities and household income, but the mechanisms of action are different. For the diversity of farmers' livelihoods, 52.70% of the catalytic effect of livelihood capital is achieved by improving the ability to integrate livelihood capital. Optimizing household employment strategies contributed to the promotion of livelihood capital on the income diversification index, with a mediating effect of 30.52%. The main contribution of this study is to clarify how livelihood capital can achieve the goal of diversifying household livelihood activities and income by coordinating livelihood capacity and employment strategies. Therefore, to enhance the comprehensive livelihood capacity of rural households, the coordination capacity of livelihood capital, livelihood capacity building should be enhanced, and employment information channels should be expanded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population urbanization is the core of new urbanization in China and is an important task in the long term. Based on mediation effect models, spatial panel data econometric models, and coupling coordination models, this study attempts to identify the direct and indirect effects of the proportion of rubber-planted areas and the indications of population urbanization using panel data of counties on Hainan Island, explaining the mechanism. The results show that rubber plantations dominated by state-owned farms weakly impacted farmers' income in 1992-2002 (first phrase), and the effects became positive in the period of smallholding expansions from 2003 to 2013 (second phrase) at a statistically significant level of 10%. However, the effects became negative between 2013 and 2020 (third phrase) due to the continuously low prices of natural rubber compared to the second phrase; the regions with higher share of rubber plantations had less local fiscal revenues per capita--especially in the third phrase--mainly because of the short industrial chain of rubber in producing regions. Shares of rubber-planted areas in the city or county (defined as rubber-planted intensity, RPI) were negatively related to proportions of staff in the non-private sector (SNS) and nonrural employees (NRE) compared to people with jobs and census registered population urbanization rates (PUR). The reversed connections between RPI and NRE became weaker over time; a 10-percentage point increase in PRI might have led to a 10.3-percentage point decrease in NRE in the first phrase, but it reduced to 3.3 percentage points in NRE with no statistical significance in the third phrase. Conversely, the negative correlation of RPI with SNS and PUR became stronger from the first to third phrase; the farmers' income and local fiscal revenue could ease the negative relationships between RPI and SNS or NRE, but they turned to enhance the relation of RPI with PUR in the second and third phrase. The evidence from Moran's I and Geary's c indices proved the existence of obvious spatial correlations in the distribution of natural rubber and farmers' income and indicated that GDP per capita and other variables are also spatially related. The estimated spatial panel data models with adjacent, geographical and economical distance matrices indicated that the direct influences of RPI on SNS, NRE, and PUR were almost negative in all phrases, but the spillover and total effects can be positive in some situations, such as in the second phrase with adjacent and geographical distance matrices of PUR; this means that an increase in rubber-planted areas may promote nonfarm job market of adjacent regions mainly due to rural labor mobility. The coupling coordination degrees between the intensity of rubber planted and population urbanization of Haikou and Sanya reach 0.96 and 0.87, respectively, in the second and third phrases--much higher than those of other regions. Compared to the first phrase, the margin of increases in the degrees of coupling coordination in the second and third phrases are reducing from the east to west in Hainan Island. The key routes to mitigate the negative links are to improve labor productivity and extend the industrial chain of natural rubber along with the nonfarm job creation, and Hainan's population urbanization should consider many other possible angles across the island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Journal of Southern Agriculture is the property of Journal of Southern Agriculture and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Southern Agriculture is the property of Journal of Southern Agriculture and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Distribution and adoption condition of new cultivated rubber varieties were analyzed in the present paper according to smallholder survey data collected in Hainan and Xishuangbanna in Yunnan. These data indicated that varieties abroad still played a dominant role in rubber plantation while Reyan( CATAS)7-33-97 was the only one that was widely grown among the self-selected. The speed of new varieties adoption was greatly influenced by space distance and the regional characteristic of distribution was obvious. The result of Binomial Logistic regression model showed that education levels, shares of rubber income, rubber planting area and whether farmers worry about sales or not had significant impact on the adoption of new varieties. The smallholders at a higher education level tended to use new varieties, and those who had positive expectations for natural rubber market prospect and did not worry about sales had stronger willingness to adopt new varieties. The smallholders, whose rubber income shares were small were more probable to adopt new varieties. There was an inverted 'U' relationship between rubber planting area and the ratio of new varieties5 adoption, which meant the farmers with a larger rubber plantation were more conservative in new varieties5 adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Southern Agriculture is the property of Journal of Southern Agriculture and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)