Determinants of out-migration in rural China: effects of payments for ecosystem services

Rural-to-urban migration has been a hallmark of economic development in China and other developing countries and can have profound socio-economic and ecological implications. This study seeks to understand the impacts on this migration of two large payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs implemented by the Chinese Government: the Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP) and the Ecological Welfare Forest Program (EWFP). The primary goal of these PES programs is environmental conservation with poverty alleviation as the secondary goal. We use a full model of the factors affecting rural out-migration at the individual, household, and community levels to investigate how these PES programs have influenced out-migration in a mountainous rural area of Anhui, China. Results show that the CCFP facilitates out-migration, while the EWFP overall discourages it, thereby somewhat offsetting the effects of the CCFP. Out-migration is also shown to be affected by a number of other individual, household, and community characteristics. The results are useful for designing concurrent PES programs in the future aiming at both environmental conservation and livelihood improvement in not only China but also other developing countries.