Human–wildlife conflict and farmland transfer under informal land institutions: Evidence from rural China

Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) affects not only agricultural production but also how farming households adjust access to and use of land. Existing research has focused largely on welfare losses and land‐use responses, while little is known about whether ecological risk is associated with the governance arrangements through which farmland is transferred

Drawing on risk and uncertainty theory, we examine the relationship between HWC and informal farmland transfer (IFT) using survey data from 921 land‐transferring households drawn from 3213 surveyed households in Asian elephant range areas of Yunnan Province, China (2022–2024). We employ Probit, Heckman two‐step and IV‐Probit models for analysis.

HWC is significantly associated with greater participation in IFT among land‐transferring households. Specifically, HWC increases both the probability and area of informal transfer‐out, but has no significant effect on informal transfer‐in. The effect is context‐dependent: Informal transfer‐out increases among households both near and far from nature reserves and is concentrated among small‐scale farmers, whereas reductions in informal transfer‐in are observed only in specific subgroups, namely households near reserves and households whose head is employed in the public sector.

These findings suggest that ecological risk is associated with asymmetric land adjustment, primarily through informal transfer‐out, and that informal arrangements remain an important channel through which households reorganize land commitments under uncertainty.

The study extends relational perspectives on HWC by showing that wildlife‐related risk is associated not only with individual land‐use responses but also with socially embedded forms of land reallocation. Policies in ecologically vulnerable regions should improve the flexibility and accessibility of formal land‐transfer institutions and strengthen coordination with wildlife damage compensation and agricultural insurance to support more secure and adaptive land adjustment.