Empirical research on impact of livelihood assets on environmental risk perception of massive pig-raising households

Pig industry, the pillar of China's agricultural and rural economic development, immensely contributes to the supply of livestock products, structural adjustment of agricultural industry, agricultural efficiency and income growth of peasants. However, pig industry is the main source of agricultural pollution. Pig industry causes severe "livestock product hazards", directly influencing livestock product quality and human and livestock safety, which has restricted the sustainable development of pig industry. Pig farmers' risk coping behavior is based on their perceived environmental risk, namely farmers' attitude and intuition towards agricultural environment. Livelihood assets are guarantee for pig farmers to resist risk and improve their response capacity. Based on previous studies on controlling pig industry pollution and improving farmers' livelihood assets, this paper focused on massive pig-raising households (raising more than 50 pigs currently) to learn pig industry pollution from the perspective of farmers' perceived environmental risks. The paper also extended research of sustainable livelihood to research of pig farmers' perceived environmental risks and behaviors. A field survey was conducted among pig farmers in Hubei, Henan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi and Tianjin via Participatory Rural Assessment Act (PRA) and an empirical analysis via use of statistical analysis and ordinal multi-classified Logistic model. The results showed that: 1) Significant differences existed among pig farmers' perceptions towards environmental pollution, environmental policies and environmental governance. 2) Human, natural and social capitals had significant impact on pig farmers' perceived environmental risks while financial and physical capitals had less impact. 3) Specific among human capital, age (correlation index of 1.784) and education (correlation index of 2.686) played significant roles in risk perception. Also among natural capital, terrain (correlation index of 1.813) had the most significant impact on risk perception. Then among social capital, cooperation with other farmers (correlation index of ?0.950) and friendship with surrounding farmers (correlation index of ?0.973) negatively influenced risk perception. Financial and physical capitals little influenced farmers' environmental risk perception (significance test of 10%). In conclusion, pig farmers' perceived environmental risks and coping capacity could be improved by establishing science and technology demonstration and training, popularizing environmental knowledge, perfecting laws and regulations and broadening income channels.