Assessing Relationships between Peasant Household Livelihood Assets and Regional Agricultural Pollution in China Using Grey Correlation Analysis

The peasant household livelihood assets affect the choice of livelihood strategies which may has the potential to contaminate or degrade the environment. Using grey correlation analysis, this study aims to analyze the correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution in China. Based on the grey correlation analysis procedure, using the related indicators materialized the peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution, the results show that intensive farming practices which are affected by livelihood assets induce more agricultural pollution emission in Eastern district. Human capital and physical capital play a key role on affecting the amount of agricultural pollution emission in Middle district. Physical capital, natural capital and financial capital have great influence on regional agricultural pollution in Western district. Therefore the specific policies targeted at controlling regional agricultural pollution should pay more attention to optimizing the peasant household livelihood assets and helping them to adopt suitable livelihood strategies.


INTRODUCTION
In recent years, agricultural pollution has become a huge environmental problem in China.In order to improve food security in China, intensive farming practices are adopted widely in rural regions to produce more agricultural production (Shen et al., 2013;Dai and Dong, 2014).Most Chinese peasant households today utilize excessive inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and labor in limited agricultural land to increase productivity.However the byproducts of intensive farming practices has the potential to contaminate or degrade the environment or cause significant injury to human health.For example, the applied nitrogen and phosphorus via fertilizers lead to eutrophication in rivers or lakes (Buckley and Carney, 2013).Pesticide that is not rapidly degraded leaches through the soil to drainage water and groundwater and pesticide leaching may cause pesticide-related health problems among farmers (Leistra and Boesten, 2010).
The peasant household livelihood assets affect the choice of livelihood strategies to fit for their resource capabilities (Soltani et al., 2012;Belay and Bewket, 2013;Jakobsen, 2013;Diniz et al., 2013).The peasant households earn a living by combining the individual or household's livelihood assets.And they pursue diversified strategies to achieve their livelihood goals (Tesfaye et al., 2011).In Ethiopia, farmers' livelihood assets, such as plot distance from residence, land to man ratio, use of dung for fuel and number of livestock owned, determined continued use of introduced land management technologies.The introduced land management technologies could help to reduce soil erosion and soil fertility depletion (Belay and Bewket, 2013).And the Irish farm households adopted pluriactive as a key strategy to maintain the standard of living desired by farm households since poor livelihood assets such as small size of farm holdings, relatively poor quality land and a predominance of beef.It stressed that the pluriactive was one important factor to protect rural nature and landscape in rural areas (Kinsella et al., 2000).Consequently this study tries to analyze the correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution in China.

METHODOLOGY
The relationships between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution are complicated.However, there is lack of precious quantitative researches on these relationships.Grey correlation analysis is suitable for solving the problems without any prior knowledge of the research objectives (Tsai and Hsu, 2010;Zhang and Feng, 2013).It is selected to analyze the correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution in China.The detailed steps are as follows.
I assume that there are m original son sequences and n original father sequences in p-th province in China.In empirical study, grey correlation analysis is applied to computer values of correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution.Therefore the son sequences correspond to peasant household livelihood assets and the father sequences correspond to agricultural pollution.The original son sequences are defined as follows: The original father sequences are defined as follows: Original sequences should be transformed to eliminate dimension.The transformation equation for original son sequences is defined as follows: where, t is the number of provinces.The transformation equation for original father sequences is similar to Eq. ( 1).Then the grey correlation coefficient L ij (k) is defined as follows: where, L ij (k) = The grey correlation coefficient between the i-th and the j-th of the k-th province △ max = The maximum of absolute difference △ min = The minimum of absolute difference ρ = Recognition coefficient and it is selected as 0.1 in this study The grey correlation degree R ij is an average of the grey correlation coefficients and is defined as follows (Deng, 1989):

CASE STUDY
Study area: This study assesses the correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution at provincial level in China.The administrative division in China has 34 provincial level divisions which are classified as 23 provinces (including Taiwan), 4 municipalities, 2 special administrative regions in 2014.Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan did not include in this study since the lack of original data and 31 provinces were selected for analysis.Due to distinct difference in natural, economic and social features in 34 provinces in China, China is partitioned into Western district, Middle district and Eastern district according to "7 th Five-Year" Plan in China.China's Western Development Program whose aim is narrowing the gap between the east coast and the western region has began since 2000 and this important police covers 6 provinces, 5 autonomous regions and 1 municipality.Therefore the region partition in "7 th Five-Year" Plan is adjusted to suit China's Western Development Program.The provinces that compose three districts in this study are as follows (Fig. 1).
Indicators: The indicators were selected to materialize the peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution.The two main criteria of selection were available for the entire study area and relevant to the peasant household livelihood assets or regional agricultural pollution.Livelihood assets can be divided into five types of capital: human capital, natural capital, physical capital, financial capital and social capital (Ellis, 1998).With respect to human capital, household labor and literacy rate were selected.For natural capital, farmland area per capita and original value of productive fixed assets were selected.Regarding physical capital, chemical fertilizer consumption per household and pesticide consumption per household were selected.For financial capital, the core indicator was net income per capita of peasant household.Agricultural pollution mainly concerned with chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen emission, total nitrogen emission, total phosphorus emission.Quantity of agricultural pollution discharged is the sum of chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen emission, total nitrogen emission and total phosphorus emission.The indicators are presented in Table 1.

Data gathering:
The data of 7 indicators used in materialize the peasant household livelihood assets including household labor, literacy, farmland area per capita, original value of productive fixed assets, chemical fertilizer consumption per household, pesticide per household and net income per capita of peasant household can be found in China Yearbook of Household Survey 2013.The data of chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen emission, total nitrogen emission and total phosphorus emission used to compute the agricultural pollution emissions can be found in China Environment Yearbook 2013.The descriptive statistics of indicators are provided in Table 2.
Using Eq. ( 1), the transformed values of household labor, literacy, farmland area per capita, original value of productive fixed assets, chemical fertilizer consumption per household, pesticide per household, net income per capita of peasant household and agricultural pollution in Eastern district, Middle district and Western district are presented in Table 3 to 5, respectively.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the grey correlation analysis procedure, using the related indicators, the correlation degree between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution in Eastern district, Middle district and Western district in China were computed (Table 6).
The correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution in Eastern district in descending order was farmland area per capita>chemical fertilizer consumption per household>pesticide consumption per household> original value of productive fixed assets>household labor>literacy rate>net income per capita of peasant household.In Eastern district, the peasant household livelihood assets including farmland area per capita, chemical fertilizer consumption per household, pesticide consumption per household and original value of productive fixed assets significantly correlate with the regional agricultural pollution.It reveals that intensive farming practices which are affected by livelihood assets induce more agricultural pollution emission in Eastern district in China.The peasant households require large amounts of input of agricultural production, such as chemical fertilizer and pesticide, to produce adequate product since a large population with relatively little agricultural land in Eastern district.However, the process of agricultural pollution stems from intensive farming practices of peasant households.
The correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution in Middle district in descending order was pesticide consumption per household>chemical fertilizer consumption per household>literacy rate>household labor>net income per capita of peasant household> original value of productive fixed assets>farmland area per capita.In Middle district, the peasant household livelihood assets including pesticide consumption per household, chemical fertilizer consumption per household, literacy rate and household labor significantly correlate with the regional agricultural pollution.It reveals that human capital and physical capital play a key role on affecting the amount of agricultural pollution emission in Middle district in China.Many provinces in Middle district are main grain production area and the agricultural pollution is increased since improper use physical capital which has a grave impact on the rural ecology.The human capital represents the skills, knowledge and ability that peasant households to pursue livelihood strategies.More household labor and higher educational attainment of peasant households imply labor input may accompany contamination or degradation of ecology in Middle district.
The correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution in Western district in descending order was pesticide consumption per household>chemical fertilizer consumption per household>farmland area per capita>net income per capita of peasant household>original value of productive fixed assets>household labor>literacy In Western district, the peasant household livelihood assets including pesticide consumption per household, chemical fertilizer consumption per household, farmland area per capita and net income per capita of peasant household significantly correlate with the regional agricultural pollution.It reveals that physical capital, natural capital and financial capital have great influence on regional agricultural pollution.The agricultural productivity in Western district in China is relatively low severe natural production condition.And the peasant households have to improve their livelihoods according livelihood assets by discharging more agricultural pollution.
The peasant household livelihood assets affect the choice of livelihood strategies which may has the potential to contaminate or degrade the environment.In this study, grey correlation analysis was selected to analyze the correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution.Household labor, literacy rate, farmland area per capita, original value of productive fixed assets, chemical fertilizer consumption per household, pesticide consumption per household, net income per capita of peasant household, chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen emission, total nitrogen emission, total phosphorus emission were designed to materialize the peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution.
Based on the grey correlation analysis procedure, the results show that the correlation between peasant household livelihood assets and regional agricultural pollution in Eastern district in descending order was farmland area per capita>chemical fertilizer consumption per household>pesticide consumption per household>original value of productive fixed assets>household labor>literacy rate>net income per capita of peasant household, the correlation in Middle district in descending order was pesticide consumption per household>chemical fertilizer consumption per household>literacy rate>household labor>net income per capita of peasant household>original value of productive fixed assets>farmland area per capita and the correlation in Western district in descending order was pesticide consumption per household>chemical fertilizer consumption per household>farmland area per capita>net income per capita of peasant household>original value of productive fixed assets>household labor>literacy rate.It reveals that the peasant household livelihood assets have different influences on the regional agricultural pollution in different districts.Therefore the specific policies targeted at improving regional agricultural pollution should pay more attention to optimizing the peasant household livelihood assets and helping them to adopt suitable livelihood strategies.

Table 3 :
Transformed values of indicators in eastern district