草地认证、放牧行为与生态后果：来自中国牧区的证据
Grassland certification, grazing behavior, and ecological consequences: Evidence from pastoral China
Journal of Development Economics · 2025 · [{"name": "Xinjie Shi", "affiliation": ["Huzhou University", "Zhejiang University"]}, {"name": "Bingyu Huangfu", "affiliation": ["Zhejiang University"]}, {"name": "Yan Zhang", "affiliation": ["Lanzhou University"]}, {"name": "Peinan Hu", "affiliation": ["Zhejiang University"]}, {"name": "Xuwen Gao", "affiliation": ["Zhejiang University"]}]
中文摘要
本文研究中国草地产权改革的生态后果，重点关注其与经济激励的关系。利用遥感和地块层面数据，我们发现，在确权改革实施后，作为草地生态代理变量的归一化植被指数（NDVI）在研究区域下降了5.5%。三个潜在机制可能解释这些负面生态结果。第一个机制是草地的严重碎片化：改革后，连片的大规模草地被划分为更小、更碎片化的地块，导致放牧强度上升。第二个机制提出，经济激励促使牧民扩大经营规模。这与第三个机制密切相关：草地使用权的不完善。由于产权不完整以及草地流转中频繁存在的缺陷，过度放牧主要发生在租入土地而非自有土地上，从而导致租入地块出现更严重的生态退化。此外，尽管家庭层面的牲畜总产出增加，且草地租赁市场变得更有效率，但我们认为，尽管存在这些预期中的改善，产权改革仍加剧了草地生态的脆弱性。这些发现表明，由草地产权改革驱动的草地可持续性与畜牧生产率之间的权衡，阻碍了制定更全面的草地退化缓解策略。
Abstract
This paper investigates the ecological consequences of grassland property rights reform in China, focusing on its relationship to economic incentives. Using remote sensing and plot-level data, we found that the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), a proxy for grassland ecology, decreased by 5.5 % in our study area following the implementation of the certification reform. Three potential mechanisms may explain these negative ecological outcomes. The first mechanism is the severe fragmentation of grasslands; contiguous large-scale grasslands were divided into smaller, fragmented plots after the reform, leading to increased grazing intensity. The second mechanism posits that economic incentives drive herders to expand their operations. This is closely linked to the third mechanism: the imperfection of grassland use rights. Due to incomplete property rights and frequent imperfections in grassland transfers, overgrazing primarily occurs on rented land rather than self-owned land, resulting in greater ecological degradation on rented plots. Additionally, while household-level aggregate livestock output increased and grassland rental markets became more efficient, we argue that, despite these anticipated improvements, property rights reforms have heightened the vulnerability of grassland ecology. These findings suggest that the trade-off between grassland sustainability and livestock productivity, driven by the grassland property rights reform, has impeded the development of more comprehensive strategies to mitigate grassland degradation.