Livelihood Resilience and Its Influencing Factors of Worker Households in the Face of State-Owned Forest Areas Reform in China

To promote the sustainable development of state-owned forest areas, the Chinese government announced the reform of state-owned forest areas in 2015. It mainly includes the logging ban of natural forests and the separation of government and enterprises. Timely investigation of the changes in the livelihood resilience of worker households before and after the reform of state-owned forest areas is of great significance to the sustainable development of state-owned forest areas. With the application of livelihood resilience theory, we established an evaluation index system from three dimensions of buffer capacity, self-organization, and learning capacity. Taking five forest industry enterprises operating state-owned forest areas in Northeast and Inner Mongolia in China as an example, we measured worker households’ livelihood resilience, and identified the key factors of worker households’ livelihood resilience. The results showed: (1) The reform of state-owned forest areas has improved the livelihood resilience of worker households in Longjiang, Daxing’anling, Inner Mongolia, and Jilin forest industry groups, but reduced the livelihood resilience of worker households in Changbai Mountain forest industry groups. (2) With the advancement of the reform of state-owned forest areas, the gap of livelihood resilience of worker households of forest industry groups shows an expanding trend. (3) The influencing factors that affect the worker households’ livelihood resilience of various forest industry groups are similar. Among them, the education of household head, household head health, household size, work experience, and neighborhood relationships are the key factors that affect the resilience of worker households.