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Environmental change and fishermen’s income: is there a poverty trap

Evidence from China’s coastal areas

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Abstract

The unequal cost and benefit led by environmental changes may potentially set China’s rural areas a “Poverty Trap.” Therefore, clarifying the relationship between environmental changes and rural income distribution is of great significance to realize the organic integration of environmental improvement and poverty governance. Based on the panel data of China’s coastal areas, this paper explores the mutual influence between environmental changes and fishermen’s income distribution, thus testing the hypothesis of the poverty-environment trap. The results show that environmental degradation has a significant negative impact on fishermen’s income. To be specific, compared with the middle- and high-income groups, the impact of environmental degradation on people with less income is more noticeable; as for the low-income groups represented by fishermen, the marginal effects of their income reduction on environmental degradation are more prominent; continuous decrease of their income together with environmental deterioration will form a vicious circle, bringing the risk of falling into the poverty-environment trap. In the follow-up environmental governance, authorities need to impose targeted measures and adopt tax or subsidy policies that are inclusive and preferential, so as to address the income gaps between fishermen and further relative poverty.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. The “fishermen” discussed in this paper mainly refers to career fishermen who make a living mainly by fishing or aquaculture, and whose registered household is located in coastal fishing villages.

  2. In order to verify the validity of instrument variables, this paper carries out the under-identification test and weak instrumental variable verification. Results show that the statistical magnitude of Kleibergen-Paap LM used for under-identification test is 32.749, and the corresponding p value is 0, which strongly rejects the original hypothesis of under-identification. Hasen J statistical magnitude used for the over-identification is 0, meaning that there is no over-identification. Thereby, the model can provide just identification. Additionally, the Cragg-Donald Wald F statistic is 20.110, which is significantly higher than 16.38, the tolerable critical value at the significance level of 10%. This rejects the original hypothesis of “weak instrumental variables.” Therefore, it is reasonable and valid to adopt Engel’s coefficient as the instrumental variable.

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Funding

This study was supported in part by grants from Social Science Planning Research Project of Shandong “Research on the Stagnation and Breakthrough Path of Relative Poverty Management in Shandong Province after 2020” (Grant No. 20CDCJ21), the key project of plan in research and development of Shandong “Research on the protection and utilization of marine fishery germplasm resources in Shandong Province” (Grant No. 2020RZE29007), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong “Research on the Long-term Path of Poverty Alleviation in Agricultural Industry from the Perspective of High-Quality Development” (Grant No. ZR2020QG045). The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 202013011), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2019M652486), and The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) project “Research on the Collaborative Governance of Marine Eco-Economic System: Behavioural Orientation, Dynamic Game and Strategic Approach” (Grant No. 71904181).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Management, Ocean University of China, No.238 Songling Rd, Qingdao, 266100, Shandong, China

    Qiang Gao, Hanxiao Xu & Bin Yuan

Authors
  1. Qiang Gao
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  2. Hanxiao Xu
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  3. Bin Yuan
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Hanxiao Xu, Bin Yuan, and Qiang Gao. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Hanxiao Xu and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Bin Yuan.

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Gao, Q., Xu, H. & Yuan, B. Environmental change and fishermen’s income: is there a poverty trap. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 60676–60691 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14254-1

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