Impact of nature reserve establishment on the subjective well-being of surrounding farmers: an analysis based on the mediating effect of farmers’ ecological awareness

Enhancing farmers’ well-being is a key focus in China’s “Three Rural Issues” (agriculture, rural areas, and farmers) work. Exploring the impact of nature reserve establishment on the subjective well-being of surrounding farmers is of great significance for creating a better and happier life for farmers. By constructing a theoretical framework of “Nature Reserve—Ecological Awareness— Multidimensional Well-being,” and based on survey data from 1002 farmers inside and outside six nature reserves in Liaoning Province, China, this study uses benchmark regression models and mediating effect models to investigate the impact of nature reserve establishment on the multidimensional well-being of surrounding farmers. The research results indicate that the establishment of nature reserves has a significant positive impact at the 5% statistical level on life satisfaction and positive emotional well-being of farmers within nature reserves, with coefficients of 0.308 and 0.164, respectively. It also has a negative impact at the 1% statistical level on negative emotional well-being, with a coefficient of -0.153. Robustness tests confirm these findings. Mediating effect analysis reveals that the ecological environment cognition does not have a statistically significant mediating effect on the well-being of farmers around nature reserves. However, the perception of ecological value has a mediating effect on life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. The perception of ecological policies of nature reserves has a mediating effect on life satisfaction but is not statistically significant for other well-being dimensions. Nature reserve management should enhance oversight and efficiency while promoting ecological civilization principles to address villagers’ misconceptions, encouraging farmers to diversify their reliance on ecosystem services and excluding densely populated villages from core conservation areas, provided ecosystem services are maintained.