Residents’ marginal willingness to pay for the environment is the most direct measurement of social-environmental preference, and is the basis of environmental system reform and detailed policies. Based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China’s mainland from 1993 to 2015, this study selected the indicators for measuring residents’ environmental preference and analyzed the main factors affecting the environmental preference of urban residents in China. It is found that factors such as residents’ income level, environmental pollution level, regional urbanization level, and residents’ education level are related to the environmental preference of urban residents, which can be used as the indicators of residents’ willingness-to-pay for the high-quality environment. According to the results, if the annual average emission of industrial waste gas is reduced by 1 ton, the marginal willingness-to-pay of Chinese urban residents for the environment improvement is 0.21 yuan. Compared with developed countries, China is still at a low level of willingness-to-pay for the environment. This study innovatively introduces the concept of environmental preference, uses the petition data of Chinese residents to the environment as the proxy variable to measure the degree of consumers’ environmental preference, and measures the marginal willingness-to-pay of urban residents for environmental governance, which provides a quantifiable basis for the government to make decisions on environmental pollution control.

The carbon trading pilot scheme will provide additional financial support for investment in afforestation carbon sequestration projects. However, the successful implementation of afforestation carbon sequestration projects under this mechanism still faces great uncertainty of economic policies. Considering these characteristics, revealing the critical threshold of investment timing and the option value from the perspective of investors can provide a more comprehensive reference for the optimal decision making of investors and policy making for the government to promote investment in afforestation carbon sequestration projects. Therefore, based on the theory of optimal investment timing of real options, the value of carbon sequestration afforestation project is measured by the Faustmann-Hartman model, and the analytical expression of optimal investment timing and option value of carbon sequestration projects in the early planning stage and project construction stage is solved by the dynamic programming method. Then, the critical threshold of optimal investment timing and the investment options value of Pinus elliottii afforestation project are empirically examined and simulated. The results show that: (1) The investment options value of Pinus elliottii afforestation carbon sequestration project is 0.12 yuan/hm2 in the project planning and filing stage and 0.59 yuan/hm2 in the project construction stage, respectively. The critical threshold of optimal investment timing is 79.23 yuan/t and 57.33 yuan/t, respectively. Rational investors will only invest immediately when the carbon price are above the critical threshold, otherwise they will choose to delay their investment. (2) Carbon price volatility, carbon sequestration transaction cost, and labor price variables have significant positive effects on the critical threshold of optimal investment timing and investment option value of Pinus elliottii afforestation project for carbon sequestration. With the increase of value of the above variables, the investment options value and the critical threshold of optimal investment timing will also increase, but it will delay the timing of investment. (3) The increase of timber price and the success rate of project filing will decrease the critical threshold of optimal investment timing. That is, the increase of value of the above variables can shorten the time for investors to delay investment. The study concludes that in order to promote investment of afforestation carbon sequestration project and for forestry to play the role in coping with and adapting to climate change, relevant government authorities need to establish and improve carbon price fluctuation control policies and project record management policies. At the same time, comprehensive measures should be taken to reduce carbon sequestration transaction costs. In addition, considering the long-term and public welfare characteristics of forestry investment and the rising trend of labor factor prices in China, it is necessary to establish and implement forestry carbon sequestration subsidy system in the future.

It is the core connotation of the concept of ecological well-being performance to maximize human well-being with minimum natural consumption and promote sustainable well-being. This study constructed a model of ecological well-being performance and decomposed ecological well-being performance into two driving effects, namely, the well-being effect of economic growth and the ecological efficiency of economic growth. The well-being effect of economic growth and the ecological efficiency of economic growth, which affect the change of ecological well-being performance in 31 provinces of China’s mainland, were calculated and analyzed by using the decoupling index (DI) and the DEA-ML index models respectively. The results show that: (1) From 2006 to 2016, the level of human development in China had been greatly improved, showing the characteristics of leading by Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai Municipalities and expanding from east to west. (2) From 2006 to 2016, the growth rate of human development level in China was significantly slower than that of per capita ecological footprint. China’s ecological well-being performance showed a downward trend as a whole. (3) China’s human well-being growth was relatively decoupled from economic growth. Human well-being growth slower than economic growth. China’s 31 provinces are divided into two categories: medium well-being growth and low well-being growth, 11 of which are Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Guangxi, Hainan, Guizhou, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Tibet and Yunnan belong to the medium well-being growth, while the other 20 belong to the low well-being growth. (4) From 2006 to 2016, China’s traditional total factor productivity and green total factor productivity improved to varying degrees, but green total factor productivity had always been lower than traditional total factor productivity. It shows that the cost of resources and environment paid by economic growth affects the quality of China’s economic growth. (5) On the whole, the performance improvement of ecological well-being in China was driven by the well-being effect of economic growth and the ecological efficiency of economic growth, based on the decomposition of driving effect and the change of ecological well-being performance of 31 provinces in China can be divided into five types: economic-led improvement type, well-being driven improvement type, well-being lagged decline type, economic lagged decline type, and overall decline type. This paper deepens the understanding of the driving effect of the change of ecological well-being performance, and provides reference for different provinces in China to adopt different strategies to improve ecological well-being performance.

In heritage protection research, much attention has been paid to community value perception and decision making. Agricultural heritage systems are living heritages and a special kind of protected area managed and conserved by local farmers as the main actor. Farmers’ cognition of the value of heritage can impact their initiative of conservation and the sustainability of the systems. Their value judgment of the heritage also matters to their cultural self-consciousness and reflects conservation effects. This research proposed a contingent valuation method (CVM) based approach to reflect farmers’ value judgement revealed by rural households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for conservation and its influencing factors. This method was tested with the Globally Important Agricultural System (GIAHS) of Xinghua Duotian Agrosystem. The case study showed that (1) the positive willingness to pay was merely 43.2%, and household economic conditions and the perception of heritages had significant effects on rural households’ positive/negative willingness to pay and the choice of payment, respectively; (2) 61.6% of the non-payment respondents regarded heritage conservation a government responsibility; (3) rural households’ perception of heritages scored low with a limited cultural self-consciousness and lack of benefit from conservation. These results revealed that the farmers’ cognition of the heritage value and participation in conservation were still limited although much had been achieved during the protection and development in the heritage site. Therefore, it is necessary to rethink the role of conservation main actors and the way to conserve, so that rural households can have a better understanding of various values of the GIAHS and actively participate in conserving the dynamic and living heritages. This proposed approach was found feasible in studying community value perception and conservation effect. Considering similar rural development issues in protected areas and national park pilots, this research may provide a useful view and method to study community co-management in protected areas.

The citizenization of migrant agricultural population is an important way to promote the new urbanization. There may be differences in the willingness and capacity of citizenization of migrant agricultural population with different employment status. Based on the dynamic monitoring data of floating population of the National Bureau of Statistics in 2016, this study took 48 cities in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei as research samples, and used the Logistics regression model and propensity score matching (PSM) method to analyze the citizenization willingness and capacity of self-employed and employed migrant agricultural population under different city sizes. It is found that: (1) There exists a differentiation between the willingness and capacity of self-employed and employed migrant agricultural population to become citizens in cities of different sizes; (2) In super megacities and megacities, the citizenization willingness of self-employed migrant agricultural population is significantly stronger than that of employed migrant agricultural population, but in medium-sized and small cities, their citizenization willingness is significantly weaker than that of employed migrant agricultural population; (3) In megacities, the citizenization capacity of self-employed migrant agricultural population is significantly lower than that of employed migrant agricultural population, but in large, medium-sized, and small cities, the citizenization capacity of self-employed migrant agricultural population is significantly higher than that of employed migrant agricultural population. Governments should implement differential policies considering employment status and optimize the allocation of human resources. In super megacities and megacities, governments should give priority to promoting the citizenization of self-employed migrant agricultural population. In medium-sized and small cities, governments should give priority to boosting the citizenization of employed migrant agricultural population. In large cities, the citizenization of both self-employed and employed migrant agricultural population should be considered.

In recent years, the growth rate of rural land transfer in China has shown a continuous downward trend. At the same time, the scale of urban-rural floating population formed by migrants has reached a new high in history. This process of incomplete citizenization of “leave the countryside without leaving behind the land” has hindered the development of land transfer. To examine the influencing mechanism and degree of different states of farmers’ citizenization on their land transfer behavior, this study used a combination of theoretical analysis and empirical econometric modeling. The theoretical concepts of “explicit citizenization” and “implicit citizenization” were proposed to reflect the gradual characteristics of the current farmers’ citizenization process in China, and the structural differences between these two types of citizenization have complex effects on farmers’ land transfer behavior. The conclusions of our study are: (1) The process of farmers’ citizenization has a positive impact on their land transfer behavior. (2) The process of land transfer is a long-term gradual process accompanied by the aging of rural permanent residents. (3) The improvement of urban pension security, land transfer rents, and improvement of farmers’ human capital levels are conducive to promoting farmers’ transfer of land. The results of this study explore the impact of farmers’ citizenization on rural land transfer and related policies.

Destination imagery (DY) is the premise of the formation of destination image (DI) and a determinant of tourists’ decision making. Mature tourists will invest more resources to participate in the decision-making process, and they rely more on DY than DI to make decisions. In this article, based on a case study of Hongcun Village in Anhui Province, the tourists’ photos published on the tourism social media website were analyzed. First, content coding was finished in NVivo11, then UCINET6 was used for co-occurrence network analysis of the encoded node data. Finally, the DY perception of tourists of Hongcun was interpreted from two aspects of landscape elements and element combination. The results show that, natural scenery and architecture constitute the main DY elements of Hongcun under the gaze of tourists. Tourists paid the highest attention to the image of “ink Hongcun,” which composed of the elements such as Huizhou style folk houses and ancient village waterscape. From a spatial perspective, various landscape elements were organically combined, cultural buildings and natural scenery were equally reflected, rural landscape and ancient village community were both present, and local unique cultural elements and ancient village life picture complemented each other. Based on the case study of destination imagery analyzed using tourists’ photos, this study interpreted the focus of tourists’ gaze and core demands, and summarized the specific problems existing in the development and marketing of ancient village tourism in southern Anhui. The conclusions could help ancient village destinations to define their own resource protection and utilization direction, optimize the development and supply of tourism products, accurately build ancient village identity, and carry out marketing strategies.

Urban areas are regional economic, political, and cultural centers, and the role of urban area determines its significance in tourism research. Applying urban network analysis, this study examined the role of subway in urban tourism traffic and its optimization in the context of individual tourists in the Nanjing’s main urban districts. The main findings are as followings. (1) Subway plays a greater role in the short-distance “do it yourself”(DIY) tours; (2) The distribution of subway lines and stations can meet the needs of DIY tourists in the central urban area, but is hard to satisfy the needs in peripheral urban areas; (3) The lines and stations of greater gravity are concentrated in the old town, which has high population density and rich tourist attractions; those of greater betweenness are situated near the boundary between Pukou District and Luhe District; those of greater closeness are located in the bordering area of the three main districts—Gulou, Xuanwu, and Qinhuai; stations with greater redundancy are mainly located along the subway lines with higher sinuosity in transitional urban areas; (4) The gravity, closeness, and redundancy values of transit stations are higher than those of general stations, but some general stations have higher betweenness values. The suggestions are as follows. (1) Bus lines should be opened for tourist attractions exclusively within the peripheral urban areas. (2) During the tourist rush reason, special subway trains should be operated for tourist attractions. (3) Make full use of bus diversion function and combine the usage of trunk roads in order to avoid redundant lines, and cut the journey. (4) Upgrade some general stations to transit stations in order to reduce the pressure of crowded lines.

The development of large-scale rural tourism has affected many areas of post-modern society, which has become a hot topic in the international research of tourism in the past 30 years. In this study, the literature on rural tourism was collected from the Elsevier ScienceDirect database since 2010 and analyzed. The conclusions are that: (1) The development of rural tourism under the economic value orientation is a hot topic for scholars in various countries. Based on the modern economic and industrial attributes of rural tourism, scholars have explored its development modes and paths, and studied the development conditions, resource utilization, product creation, market expansion, and influencing factors of rural tourism. In addition, scholars have examined the definition, measurement, and implementation of sustainable rural tourism development. (2) The motivation of rural tourists is diverse, the way and content of their experiences are different, and consumer satisfaction with services and products is an important factor affecting their loyalty. (3) Scholars have paid more attention to the development of rural enterprises and studied the application of information technology in rural tourism enterprises. Small business development faces various limitations, and innovation and cooperation are very important. (4) Residents have different attitudes towards the development of tourism. Community participation is the key factor to ensure the social equity of rural tourism development. The research in this field is often about facilitating participation. (5) Government intervention shows different effects from national macro-level control and local practices, and its research is often integrated with other fields. (6) Study on the impact of rural tourism presents critical thinking. In the empirical study of communities, the positive economic impact of tourism is questioned. Cultural change of destinations cannot be simply characterized as “negative” or “passive.” The social influence includes change in the thoughts of the residents, identity construction, and evolution of community relations, race, nationality, and national identity, among others. Overall, most international scholars regard rural tourism as an economic behavior. Tourism, as the carrier of modernization, has exerted a comprehensive and far-reaching influence on traditional villages. As a practice field of capital, rural tourism destination has produced a series of negative effects. It is necessary to reflect on relevant ethical issues in tourism development and theoretical construction. In view of these, Chinese scholars should reflect on the localization and reconstruction of the theories according to social needs, so as to provide a scientific basis for the development of rural tourism in China.

Ecosystem service spatial flow is the delivery of an ecosystem service to people or the movement of material and people. Its assessment elucidates the dominant contributors of ecosystem services and their spatial relationships. In this study, we defined a concept of regional correlation degree as the flow quantity of ecosystem services from a supply area to a demand area, which can be used as an important reference for regional ecological compensation. Based on the characteristics of wind direction and spatial location in the Beijing-Tianjin sandstorm control engineering area, this study developed a regional correlation model with the provision degree and influencing degree of sand-fixing services. Subsequently, we estimated the sand-fixing services in the sandstorm control engineering area in 2015 by the revised wind erosion equation (RWEQ), and analyzed the ecological links between different administrative districts of the sandstorm control engineering area and Beijing Municipality. The results indicate that the regional correlation degrees of sand-fixing services ranged from 0 to 13.43%. Chicheng County in Zhangjiakou City presented the highest correlation degree with Beijing, and the high correlation zones of sand-fixing services were Sunnitezuo Banner, Xuanhua District, Huaian County, Xiahuayuan District, and Suniteyou Banner. However, Wengniute Banner, Chengde County, Ningcheng County, Jixian County, and Yangyuan County showed the lowest ecological links with Beijing in sand-fixing services. The regional correlation of sand-fixing services was generally high in the west and low in the east. This phenomenon mainly can be attributed to the predominant wind direction in the Beijing-Tianjin sandstorm control engineering area, and the spatial heterogeneities of sand-fixing services. Additionally, the social and economic development levels in different districts presented negative correlation with the correlation degree of sand-fixing services. This result implies that the regions of higher correlation degree of sand-fixing services with Beijing were suffering from more severe poverty. Therefore, we concluded that Beijing should pay more ecological compensation to those counties with high correlation degrees in sand-fixing services to ensure the sustainable provision of sand-fixing services.

The Hehuang Valley is located in the transitional region between the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Loess Plateau, and is the economic and cultural center of Qinghai Province. The fragile ecological environment in this region is in conflict with the intense human activities. For the assessment of habitat quality in ecologically sensitive areas under landscape pattern change, this study highlighted the transformation process among different landscape types by using the improved flow transfer matrix, and calculated the habitat quality of the Hehuang Valley from 1995 to 2015 with the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model, analyzing its spatiotemporal change and cold-hot spot distribution characteristics, along with characterizing the correlation between habitat quality and landscape pattern elements with gray relational degree. The results show that: (1) From 1995 to 2015, grassland, construction land, and water area kept increasing, and landscape types showed the characteristics of fragmentation, complexity, and heterogeneity. (2) Habitat quality of the Hehuang Valley was divided by the line connecting Guide County and Ledu County higher habitat quality and more concentrated hotspots were distributed to the south of this line. (3) Correlation between habitat quality and landscape pattern indices including Shannon’s Diversity Index (SHDI), Shannon’s Evenness Index (SHEI), Landscape Division Index (DIVISION), Contagion (CONTAG), Largest Patch Index (LPI) and the scale of forest land and grassland is higher, and is lower with construction land area, showing that under the influence of ecological protection policies, construction land increased by occupying landscape types other than high quality habitat types, such as forest land and grassland. The results can be used to guide the identification of ecologically sensitive areas and the demarcation of ecological red line in the Hehuang Valley.

The Yancheng coastal wetland is an important part of migratory bird habitat along the coast of the Yellow Sea-Bohai Sea of China. Habitat quality is an important reflection of habitat function, while the expansion of Spartina alterniflora has seriously threatened the migratory bird habitat. Therefore, based on the remote sensing images of 10 time periods from 1983 to 2017 and employing image processing and GIS technologies, the relationship between the spatial-temporal variation of habitat quality and the expansion of Spartina alterniflora in the core area of the Yancheng National Nature Reserve was analyzed by using the InVEST model. The results are as follows: (1) From 1983 to 2017, there was a significant positive correlation between the expansion of Spartina alterniflora and time, and the percentage of the area of Spartina alterniflora marsh increased from 1.693% to 24.930%. It clearly went through several stages in time, and the expansion of Spartina alterniflora showed multi-directional and spatially variable characteristics. (2) Under the influence of human activities and the expansion of Spartina alterniflora, migatory bird habitat quality showed obvious fluctuations: From 1983 to 1988, habitat quality index value increased from 0.863 to 0.878, then decreased to 0.740 in 2014 and increased again to 0.775 in 2017. (3) There was a positive correlation between the areal change of Spartina alterniflora marsh and the change of the index of habitat degradation, and a negative correlation between the areal change of Spartina alterniflora marsh and the change of the index of habitat quality. The expansion of Spartina alterniflora led to the dramatic decrease in area of the Suaeda salsa marsh, which is a regionally suitability habitat, and this became an important factor in the degradation of regional habitat quality. Therefore, controlling the expansion of Spartina alterniflora is an important problem faced by the region. The results can provide reference for the improvement of habitat and sustainable management of coastal wetland from the perspective of the relationship between landscape pattern and habitat quality.

Analyzing the changes in potential evapotranspiration (ET0) and the attribution is an important way to understand hydrologic process and its response to climate change. In this study, after applying the FAO Penman-Monteith equation to estimate the ET0 in the Weihe River Basin for the period of 1960-2016, the differential method was employed to quantify the contribution of the four meteorological factors, i.e. solar radiation (Rs), wind speed (u2), relative humidity (RH), and average temperature (T), to the ET0 changes. The main results are shown below. During the 57 years, annual ET0 showed a slightly increasing trend of 0.239 mm/a, and multi-year average annual ET0 increased from the west to the east and from the south to the north of the basin spatially. We found that annual ET0 was most sensitive to RH, followed by Rs and T, and least sensitive to u2. Moreover, the sensitivity coefficients of T and u2 decreased with increasing elevation. From the perspective of contribution, the changes in T contributed most to the changes of annual ET0, followed by u2 and RH, and the changes in Rs showed the smallest contribution to annual ET0 changes. Generally speaking, the negative effects caused by the decrease in Rs and u2 to annual ET0 changes were offset by the positive effects caused by the increase in T and decrease in RH, which finally resulted in the increasing trend in annual ET0 during 1960-2016 in the whole basin. Since the correlation among the meteorological factors may influence their individual contribution to ET0 changes, we can fully discuss the attribution of ET0 changes by considering the interactions between these factors in practice. This study is significant for understanding the influence mechanism of climate change to hydrologic cycle as well as improving our capacity to cope with climate change regionally.

Potential evapotranspiration (PET) is a key factor in calculating actual evapotrans-piration, evaluating regional dry and wet conditions, and water resources management. Using daily meteorological data at 11 typical forest sites of the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN) in the past 20 years, we estimated PET by both the Penman-Monteith equation and Priestley-Taylor equation, and analyzed the trend of PET and its climate attribution. The results of the two methods indicate that PET in seven typical forest ecosystems in China showed decreasing trends in the past 20 years. Wind speed dominated PET changes in the Changbai Mountain temperate coniferous and broadleaved mixed forest and the He Mountain subtropical artificial evergreen broadleaved forest, while net radiation dominated PET changes in other forests. We also quantified the difference between PET at each forest site (PET_PM) and that estimated by meteorological data from a nearby site of China Meteorological Administration (PET_CMA). On average, PET_CMA is higher than PET_PM, mainly because the meteorological stations are mostly with higher temperature, wind speed, and net radiation, and lower relative humidity than the CERN forest sites. For the forests in northern and eastern China, PET_CMA trends were higher than PET_PM, because the former have higher wind speed and net radiation trends. In contrast, PET_CMA trends were lower than PET_PM for other forests, which are mainly due to their higher trend of relative humidity and lower trend of net radiation. The research can provide a reference for understanding the characteristics of the potential evapotranspiration in China’s forest ecosystems and its response to climate change.