Effects of Value Perception, Environmental Regulation and Their Interaction on the Improvement of Herdsmen's Grassland Ecological Policy Satisfaction

A framework for prioritizing urban ecological infrastructure (UEI) implementation tasks based on residents' ecological demands and government policies

With rapid urbanization, balancing urban ecological infrastructure (UEI) construction and residents' ecological demands (RED) has become an imperative but challenging issue for sustainable development. This study develops an integrated framework to systematically prioritize UEI implementation based on localized RED and government policies. We incorporate the Kano model and quality function deployment (QFD) approach to quantify the complex associations between various resident needs and existing policies. Taking Chengdu City as a case study, resident surveys and policy reviews are conducted to construct the demand-policy linkage matrix and determine the importance of UEI tasks. Results reveal that, (1) flood control capacity is most prioritized by RED, followed by wetland area and less PM2.5, while cultural service demands rank lower; (2) Forest coverage, green space development, wetland construction and park construction emerge as priority UEI implementation tasks that can maximize fulfilling RED. This novel framework enables adaptive customization of UEI planning for different cities through configurable modeling. It provides a valuable decision support tool that enables optimizing or improving the prioritization of UEI implementation tasks based on residents' preferences. The research results have important reference value for the prioritization of UEI implementation tasks.

Dynamic Response and Adaptation of Grassland Ecosystems in the Three-River Headwaters Region under Changing Environment: A Review

The Three-River Headwaters Region (TRHR) is crucial to the sustainable development of China and Southeast Asia. The sustainability of grassland ecosystems in the region has been seriously challenged in recent years. This paper reviewed the changes in the grasslands of the TRHR and their responses to climate change and human activities. The review showed that accurate monitoring of grassland ecological information is the basis for effective management. Although alpine grassland coverage and the above-ground biomass of the alpine grassland have generally increased in the region over the past 30 years, the degradation has not been fundamentally curbed. Grassland degradation substantially reduced topsoil nutrients and affected their distribution, deteriorated soil moisture conditions, and aggravated soil erosion. Grassland degradation led to loss of productivity and species diversity, and this is already harming the well-being of pastoralists. The "warm and wet" trend of the climate promoted the restoration of alpine grasslands, but widespread overgrazing is considered as one of the main reasons for grassland degradation, and related differences still exist. Since 2000, the grassland restoration policy has achieved fruitful results, but the formulation of the policy still needs to integrate market logic effectively and strengthen the understanding of the relationship between ecological protection and cultural protection. In addition, appropriate human intervention mechanisms are urgently needed due to the uncertainty of future climate change. For mildly and moderately degraded grassland, traditional methods are applicable. However, the severely degraded "black soil beach" needs to be restored by artificial seeding, and the stability of the plant-soil system needs to be emphasized to establish a relatively stable community to prevent secondary degradation.

Government Trust, Environmental Pollution Perception, and Environmental Governance Satisfaction

Environmental governance is related to the healthy living standard of human beings and the sustainable development of an economic society. It is of great significance to explore the influence of government trust and environmental pollution perception on environmental governance satisfaction to improve the performance of government environmental governance. Based on the CSS2019 survey data, 3872 survey samples were statistically analyzed, and the optimal scale regression model was used to analyze the relationship between government trust, environmental pollution perception, and environmental governance satisfaction. The results showed that 52.27% of the respondents believed that the satisfaction of environmental governance was good, and both government trust and environmental pollution perception had significant positive effects on the satisfaction of environmental governance. The trust level of the central government, district and county governments, and township governments shows a "differential government trust" state, which is pyramidal. However, the impact of government trust on environmental governance satisfaction shows an inverted pyramid structure, and the township government has the largest effect, which is not matched with the distribution of government trust level. The influence effect of air pollution perception is relatively large, and the public is sensitive to air pollution. Government trust has an impact on the satisfaction of environmental governance through the "expectation-response" path. People are close to the township government and have the opportunity to contact and interact with the township government and its staff. They can directly observe the governance performance and share the public goods of environmental governance. Therefore, it is necessary to further improve the trust level of township governments, strengthen the control of air pollution and improve the township government's environmental governance ability.

Tibetan Herders’ Life Satisfaction and Determinants under the Pastureland Rehabilitation Program: A Case Study of Maduo County, China

The Pastureland Rehabilitation Program (PRP) has been implemented for nearly 20 years, and the lives of herders in different regions have been affected to varying degrees. The level of people’s well-being could measure the success of policy. Taking Maduo County as an example, the life satisfaction of 266 Tibetan herders was investigated through a participatory questionnaire survey in July 2021. Multiple linear regression and optimal scale regression were constructed to analyze the impact of the satisfaction of different aspects of life and PRP on life satisfaction, respectively. The results show that the herders in Maduo County had relative high satisfaction in various aspects of life and overall life, and leisure and consumption were important aspects influencing life satisfaction. The relative living standard, the difficulty in borrowing and the quality of government services had a significant positive impact on herders’ life satisfaction. Occupation and migration location also led to the significant differences of life satisfaction. However, the income changes caused by PRP and subsidy levels did not show a significant impact. We discussed the particularity of Maduo County and suggested that more attention should be paid to the improvement of the social environment such as wealth disparity, channels of assistance, working environment, and the effective assistance formulated according to the demands of different groups needs to be optimized continuously, so as to enhance the self-development ability of herders.