Cultural Ecosystem Services and Sustainable Livelihoods: The Role of Ethnic Traditional Sports in Rural Revitalization in Yunnan, China

Traditional sports are seldom counted as cultural ecosystem services, but in the rural communities we studied in Yunnan they supply a range of non-material benefits that households clearly rely on. This paper asks how ethnic traditional sports function as cultural ecosystem services within the sustainable livelihoods framework, and what they add to human, social, natural, physical, and financial capital. We draw on household surveys (n = 412), participatory rural appraisal workshops, and in-depth interviews (n = 68) conducted in Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, and Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture. Survey and modeling results point to five service categories — identity affirmation, social cohesion, knowledge transmission, recreation and tourism, and spiritual wellbeing — with the strongest measured contributions to social capital (mean 4.32/5.00) and human capital (mean 4.18/5.00). Structural equation modeling shows a significant positive effect of sports-mediated cultural ecosystem services on livelihood outcomes (β = 0.437, p < 0.001), routed largely through community social networks and cultural identity. Three livelihood trajectories — cultural entrepreneurship, community-based tourism, and agro-sport integration — carry these services into tangible income and security. The same processes that create value, however, also expose the practices to cultural erosion and elite capture, and we close by considering governance arrangements that could keep the services community-embedded.