Economic Resilience as a Mediator: Assessing the Impact of China's Grazing Withdrawal Project on Herders’ Well-being in the Yellow River Source Region

In the context of China’s ongoing ecological restoration and livelihood transition policies, understanding how large-scale environmental interventions shape the economic resilience and well-being of herder households is crucial for designing sustainable and socially inclusive conservation strategies. Based on 266 household-level survey data from the Yellow River Source Region of Sanjiangyuan National Park, we construct an indicator system for evaluating economic resilience and employ multiple linear regression to examine the impacts of the three-decade-long Grazing Withdrawal Project on herders’ economic resilience and subjective well-being, while simultaneously testing the mediating role of economic resilience in translating the project into enhanced welfare. Results reveal that households in the Yellow River Source Region were characterized by "low economic resilience yet high subjective well-being." Among the three resilience dimensions, recovery capacity and reorganization capacities were comparatively weak; economic resilience had a significant positive impact on herders' well-being, partially mediating the relationship between policy variables and subjective well-being; compared with other policy measures, subsidy adequacy and emergency support remained the primary drivers of subjective well-being. Future policy should innovate a diversified subsidy regime that maintains herders’ subjective well-being while making up for the shortcomings of reorganization capacity, thereby securing the sustainability of livelihoods alongside ecological conservation.