Ecological Welfare of China's Forest Towns: Concept, Formation Mechanism, and Evaluation Index System.

The economic subsystem, social subsystem, and natural ecosystem of forest towns constitute forest towns' complex ecosystem. Forest towns' complex system provides good ecological welfare for the residents' survival and development, especially the beautiful ecological environment has played a positive role in promoting the residents' healthcare. First of all, this paper expounds on the concept of forest towns' ecological welfare from the construction goals of forest towns. Secondly, it analyzes the formation mechanism of forest towns' ecological welfare based on the DPSIR conceptual model. Finally, taking forest towns in Heilongjiang Province as an example, the index system for ecological welfare evaluation is constructed, and the influence degree of the evaluation index is analyzed through using the analytic hierarchy process. The results show that employment and income are the most important indicators that affect the ecological welfare of forest towns in Heilongjiang Province. This paper provides a theoretical basis for evaluating the level of ecological welfare level, level of healthcare level, and planning development path of Chinese forest towns in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]