Analysis of Farmers' Policy Response to Reforestation and its Income and Water-Saving Effects——Take the Example of Ecologically Fragile Drylands

Entering the new century, extreme weather, carbon emissions, and public health safety have become major threats to human survival. However, China has a large population and a fragile ecological environment, especially the extremely arid climate in the northwest region. Causing environmental problems such as extensive soil desertification, salinization, and sandstorms. How to solve the problem of balancing environmental protection and economic benefits in ecologically fragile arid areas. In 2014, China launched a new round of policy of returning farmland to forests. Farmers' response to the country's new round of returning farmland to forests is based on their perception of benefits, which in turn determines their participation behavior. This study is based on the "Two Mountains" theory and analyzes the "dual effects" of farmers' income and water conservation under the impact of compensation policies after the implementation of the new round of returning farmland to forests for 5 years. Based on the two-period data of the survey of farmers in the ecologically fragile arid area of Xinjiang, this paper uses the PSM-DID model, combined with the quantile regression method, regional difference test and other empirical models, to analyze the income effect and water-saving effect of the common response of farmers' benefit perception and participation in returning farmland to forests under the time dynamic. Based on the above analysis, this article proposes to mobilize farmers' independent participation in sustainable ecological environment protection from the perspective of farmers' response, improve the basic policy coordination in arid areas, consolidate poverty alleviation achievements, and achieve the dual goals of green water, green mountains, and golden mountains