Measuring Livelihood Resilience in the Mountainous Regions of Southwest China: Toward an Integrated Approach

Livelihood resilience combines resilient thinking and the concept of sustainable livelihoods, focusing on how systems can maintain or recover secure operations in the face of disturbances. As an emerging research paradigm, livelihood resilience serves as a potent analytical tool to effectively address concerns regarding household livelihood sustainability. However, debates have arisen concerning the values that should be embedded in livelihood resilience, giving rise to two divergent perspectives that emphasize objective material environments and subjective perceptual attitudes. Given this challenge, the present study proposes an integrated approach that combines objective indicators of the physical environment with subjective indicators of perceptual attitudes. Following the principles of system integration, we employ the fully arranged polygon graphical index method to evaluate the livelihood resilience of rural households in the mountainous regions of Southwest China. We conduct a comparative analysis to explore disparities in livelihood resilience among various demographic groups and within diverse environments, aiming to enhance our understanding of resilient behaviors triggered by mountainous landscapes and promote equity in livelihood resilience outcomes. The results indicate that households in Southwest China generally exhibit low levels of livelihood resilience, with significant variations observed among different demographic groups but no notable disparities found across diverse environments. Finally, policy implications for increasing livelihood resilience within the study area are identified. The application of this integrated approach, which combines assessments of the objective material environment and subjective perceptual attitude while adhering to the principles of system integration, provides a novel scholarly response to the ongoing debate on livelihood resilience assessment.