Role of livelihood resilience in improving sustainable household well-being for disaster resettlement in Ankang Prefecture, Shaanxi Province, China

To mitigate ecological degradation and improve human well-being, the Chinese Government has implemented the largest disaster resettlement program from 2011 to 2020. Ankang Prefecture, as one of the key regions in Shaanxi Province where this large-scale resettlement program was performed, has provided a model for observing and evaluating the impact of the resettlement project, both within Shaanxi Province and across other regions of China. As a place where a number of protection and development policies converge, the economic and social development of Ankang is confronted with multiple constraints. Measuring livelihood resilience and further evaluating its impact in this region is key to the delivery and output of disaster resettlement programs to improve human well-being. We attempted to empirically examine the significance and impact of livelihood resilience in the context of disaster resettlement. This study expanded the social–ecological system resilience theory to examine rural household livelihood systems. We used the spatial vector method and 657 field research data collected in July 2021 from Ankang Prefecture to measure the livelihood resilience of rural households and elucidate both general and specific aspects. The sustainable household well-being (SHWB) of rural households was measured in five dimensions concerning the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) report. In econometrics, we used coarsened exact matching (CEM) to stratify the sample and reduce the computational bias. We then applied group regression to test the effect of livelihood resilience on SHWB empirically. The findings indicate that: (1) livelihood resilience is significantly and positively related to SHWB, and it is conducive to the level of well-being; (2) disaster resettlement has a negative effect on SHWB; (3) energy and medical facilities in resettlement infrastructure and services play active roles in SHWB. These results have policy implications for strengthening livelihood resilience and improving human well-being and important implications for livelihood development in rural areas across China and other developing nations.