Impact of sustainable land management on household resilience gaps: Evidence from China's marginalized farmers

With global land degradation worsening, sustainable land management practices (SLMPs, including applying organic fertilizer and mulching) have been widely promoted to enhance agricultural productivity, reduce income risks, and foster social peace. Using survey data from 1807 farming households in China, this study employs a multinomial endogenous switching regression (MESR) model to examine the adoption of different SLMPs and their effects on economic resilience (ER, measured by log household income) and comprehensive resilience (CR, a composite index constructed by incorporating absorptive, self-organizing, and learning capacities). The results reveal that adoption of soil fertility improvement (SFI) significantly reduces ER by 22.80 %, whereas adoption of soil conservation and ecocycle practices (SCE) and joint adoption of SFI and SCE significantly enhance it. In contrast, all adoption strategies significantly improve farmers' CR, with joint adoption generating the largest gains. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that, compared to non-adopters, joint adoption significantly reduces the gender-based ER gap (measured by the difference in resilience between marginalized and reference groups under each adoption scenario) from 2.966 to 1.143, and reduces regional resilience gap, whereas it widens the resilience gap between small- and large-scale farmers. These findings highlight the importance of SLMPs policies that prioritize marginalized groups, particularly women, farmers in less-developed regions, and smallholders, to promote resilience equity in developing countries.