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806Issues concerning agriculture, rural areas, and farmers are fundamental to China, and farmers’ income growth is a core aspect. How to enhance the endogenous driving force of rural development and thereby increase farmers’ incomes by transforming development models within the context of green development has become a crucial goal and task for China.
Based on the panel data from 1,756 counties in China from 2012 to 2022, this paper empirically examines the impact of the construction of National Ecological Civilization Demonstration Zones (NECDZs) on farmers’ income growth using a multi-period DID model and analyzes the underlying mechanisms.
The results indicate that the construction of NECDZs significantly increases farmers’ incomes. Mechanism testing suggests that it not only promotes industrial restructuring, but also attracts businesses, particularly those in the tertiary sector, thereby boosting farmers’ incomes. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the income-increasing effect of NECDZs is more pronounced in areas with higher urbanization levels, less rugged terrain, and within municipal districts. Extended analysis reveals that government scale plays a significant positive moderating role in the income-increasing effect. Furthermore, the construction of NECDZs has a certain spatial spillover effect, boosting farmers’ incomes in neighboring counties.
The marginal contributions of this paper are that: First, it explores fundamental measures to increase farmers’ incomes from the perspective of green development, providing direct empirical evidence for the effective transformation of “lucid waters and lush mountains” into invaluable assets. Second, it empirically analyzes the income-increasing effect of the construction of NECDZs, further enriching the research on the impact of NECDZs and providing a theoretical basis for further promoting ecological civilization construction. Third, it reveals two mechanisms by which the construction of NECDZs promotes farmers’ income growth: promoting industrial structure upgrading and attracting enterprises, thus providing policy references and path choices for implementing the concept of “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets” and achieving green and high-quality development and common prosperity for farmers through ecological civilization construction.
