Promotion or inhibition: The impact of wildlife incidents on agricultural production investment

With the increasing interaction between rural communities and wildlife, understanding how wildlife incidents impact farmers' agricultural production investment is crucial for sustaining rural livelihoods. This study uses 784 household surveys from the Qinling area of the Giant Panda National Park to explore the impact of the degree of wildlife incidents on rural households' agricultural production investment. The findings reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between the degree of wildlife incidents and agricultural production investment, indicating that investment initially increases but eventually declines as the degree of wildlife incidents rises. This pattern is characterized by differentiated decision-making across various investment types and crop categories. Specifically, labor investment peaks first, followed by machinery and service investment, and finally basic production materials investment. Similarly, food crops investment peaks before economic crops investment. Notably, results from the heterogeneity analysis show that this inverted U-shaped effect is particularly significant for farmers within the national park region, non-agricultural part-time households, non-agricultural households, and small-scale households. Furthermore, the degree of wildlife incidents can promote investment by heightening farmers' loss perception and increasing specialization in planting structures, while inhibiting investment by reducing farmland security levels. These findings deepen our understanding of how wildlife incidents influence agricultural economic behaviors. They offer critical insights for designing targeted interventions to support sustainable farming in protected areas, thus providing evidence-based guidance for national park management in similar developing contexts.