Quantifying farmers' Livelihood Efficiency, Regional Indicators and Its Influencing Factors: Implementing an Improved Sustainable Livelihood Framework

ABSTRACT Research on sustainable livelihoods tend to emphasis on objective and macroregional aspects. However, there is space to expand research on the farmers' livelihoods in the context of poverty alleviation and rural revitalization development. This paper uses a field survey on farmers' livelihood efficiency, influencing factors and mechanisms of farmers' livelihood efficiency in the Qinba mountainous areas of southern Shaanxi China. Based on DEA and Tobit approaches, the authors investigate farmer livelihood efficiency and analyze the disparities according to the farm households' socio‐demographics descriptions. Findings of this study show that, livelihood efficiency is a new entry point of sustainable livelihoods for farmers, and currently, the overall livelihood efficiency of farmers in the study area is low, which needs to be further improved. The results also show that the willingness of environmental protection activities, village busses and government financial expenditure have a significant positive impact on the livelihood efficiency, while the abandonment has a significant negative impact on the livelihood efficiency of farmers. These factors have significant differences in the impact of farmers' technical efficiency and scale efficiency. The results further indicate that, utilization and conversion rate of the existing livelihood capital of farmers is low. Livelihood diversification should be stimulated to enhance “livelihood export” and its operation ability of livelihood capital accumulation. The study findings also propose that, there is a need of reform of dual paths to improve the efficiency of farmers' livelihood, and promote farmers' livelihood development with “wide path” and “wide choice.”