Land-Use Policy and Farmers' Livelihood Resilience: A Structured Review of Conceptual Pathways to Rural Revitalization (土地利用政策与农民生计韧性:乡村振兴概念路径的结构化综述)

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Open Access Review

by
Xiaoqiao Liu

1,
Daping Liu

2,
Xinyuan Li

3,
Heyang Gong

4 and
Yuefen Li

1,*

1

College of Earth Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China

2

Jilin Provincial Cultivated Land Protection and Land Consolidation Center, Changchun 130061, China

3

College of Economics and Management, Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun 130118, China

4

School of Public Administration, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Submission received: 8 July 2026 / Revised: 23 August 2026 / Accepted: 26 August 2026 / Published: 27 August 2026

Abstract

Under pressure from climate change, market volatility, and policy adjustments, rural livelihood systems face increasing vulnerability, which threatens poverty reduction gains. Livelihood resilience—the ability to withstand shocks, sustain livelihoods, and drive transformation—has become central to assessing sustainable rural development; however, its concepts, metrics, and links to land-use policies have not yet been systematically integrated. This review synthesizes existing research on farmers’ livelihood resilience and its relationship with land-use policy, yielding three main findings: (1) It synthesizes existing definitions and clarifies major assessment approaches based on the distinction between resilience and vulnerability. (2) Multiple drivers influencing livelihood resilience were identified, many of which can be directly or indirectly influenced, mediated, or coordinated through land-use policy and related rural governance instruments. (3) Three potential pathways linking land-use policies to buffering, adaptive, and transformative capacities were identified, with policy effects varying across households and contexts and potentially contributing to rural revitalization through changes in livelihood resources and opportunities.

1. Introduction

Farmers’ livelihood resilience refers to the capacity of farm households to maintain basic livelihoods, restore production and living conditions, and pursue adaptive adjustment and sustainable development under external shocks such as climate change, market volatility, resource constraints and institutional change [1,2]. Farmers’ livelihood resilience is a core issue in resilience research and the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [3]. With over 40% of the global population still residing in rural areas, this topic has become increasingly important as farm households face the compounded impacts of climate variability, fluctuations in agricultural product prices, labor mobility, and changing resource constraints [4,5,6,7]. For farm households, land is not only a basic input for crop and livestock production, but also a property asset, residential space, source of ecosystem services and platform for rural industrial development [8,9,10]. Changes in land acquisition, security of tenure, transferability, land-use restrictions, infrastructure, and compensation may not only alter the livelihood resources that farmers own and can mobilize, but may also influence their behavioral choices, such as production investment, labor allocation, and livelihood diversification [11,12,13,14]. These land allocation processes do not arise spontaneously but are rooted in the institutional environment shaped by land-use policies. Consequently, land-use policies may influence farmers’ livelihood resilience—their ability to buffer against shocks, restore production, and achieve transformation—by reshaping access to rights and resources, altering livelihood capital, and inducing changes in farmers’ behavior [9,10].

Existing research has developed along two main lines. The first focuses on farmers’ livelihood resilience itself, drawing mainly on the sustainable livelihoods framework and social–ecological resilience theory to examine its conceptual meaning, measurement dimensions and determinants. The sustainable livelihoods framework emphasizes that farm households cope with vulnerability by combining human, natural, physical, financial and social capital, while access to and allocation of these forms of capital are strongly shaped by institutions and policy environments [15,16,17,18]. Resilience theory further highlights the capacity of systems to absorb disturbance, adapt and transform under external shocks [19,20,21]. Building on this foundation, Speranza et al. [2] proposed a livelihood resilience measurement framework centered on buffer capacity, self-organization and learning capacity, advancing the operationalization of farmers’ livelihood resilience. Subsequent studies have shown that modern agricultural production systems, specialized village development, ecological compensation, income diversification and knowledge learning mechanisms are associated with increased farmers’ livelihood resilience by improving resource access, strengthening external support and building agency [22,23,24]. The second line of research approaches the issue from land institutions and rural spatial governance, examining how policy instruments such as land consolidation, tenure documentation, idle homestead revitalization, ecological compensation and rural living-environment governance affect land-use efficiency, resource accessibility and farmers’ development capacity [10,12,13,14].

Overall, although existing research has revealed the capacity structure of farmers’ livelihood resilience and the resource allocation effect of land policy, a unified analytical framework for land policy evaluation has not yet been formed. According to Barrett et al., existing resilience research still exhibits significant differences in conceptual definition, dimensional classification, and measurement methods, thus necessitating further clarification of how farmers’ livelihood resilience is conceptualized and operationalized in empirical research [25]. In their systematic review and meta-analysis, Fan et al. identified multiple factors influencing livelihood resilience, such as income, food access, and adaptability, but have not further determined which of these factors can be affected, mediated, or coordinated through land-use policies [26]. Natarajan et al. further emphasize, through their critical review and reconstruction of the sustainable livelihoods framework, that institutions and policies are important structural processes shaping access to livelihood resources and livelihood pathways; however, from the perspective of policy evaluation issues addressed in this paper, this framework does not further establish the correspondence between specific land policy instruments, changes in livelihood capital, and different resilience capacities [27]. In contrast, Higgins et al. and Huntington & Lisher’s reviews of evidence on land tenure and land governance show that land system reform has formed a basic path of action from tenure security, investment, and resource allocation to farmer development outcomes, but the relevant evidence mainly revolves around outcomes such as investment, productivity, income, and welfare, and the strength of evidence for different outcomes is inconsistent. This further suggests that existing research lacks a policy-oriented analytical framework that can systematically compare how different land-use policy tools are linked to changes in livelihood capital and different resilience capacities [28,29].

Against this background, this study re-examines the formation of farmers’ livelihood resilience from the perspective of land-use policy, responding to the practical needs of rural revitalization and sustainable rural development. This study employs a structured literature review, combining bibliometric and qualitative content analysis methods, to address three questions: (1) How is farmers’ livelihood resilience conceptualized and operationalized in empirical research? (2) What factors influence farmers’ livelihood resilience, and can these factors be influenced, mediated, or coordinated through land-use policies? (3) How can a policy-oriented framework be developed—based on China’s land policy system—to assess the potential impacts of various land-use policies on farmers’ livelihood resilience? To this end, the study aims to integrate research on land-use policy with that on farmers’ livelihood resilience, thereby laying a theoretical foundation and providing analytical tools for optimizing land policy design, enhancing farmers’ livelihood resilience, and advancing rural revitalization. This study comprises eight sections; the next section details the review methodology employed. Section 3 reviews the evolution and definition of farmers’ livelihood resilience. Section 4 synthesizes existing assessment methods for farmers’ livelihood resilience, while Section 5 summarizes the factors influencing it. Section 6 analyzes the interactions between land policy and farmers’ livelihood resilience. Section 7 presents a discussion, comparing the proposed framework with existing ones and addressing its scope of applicability and research limitations. Section 8 summarizes the study’s key findings, policy implications, and directions for future empirical validation.

2. Research Methodology

This study employs a structured literature review approach, combining bibliometric analysis with qualitative content analysis. Given the distinct objectives of these two types of analysis, two separate datasets were constructed: a bibliometric dataset to identify development trends and the knowledge structure of research on rural livelihood resilience and land-use policy; and a core review dataset to address the research questions and facilitate full-text evidence extraction, comparison, and conceptual synthesis.

2.1. Bibliometric Dataset and Analysis

To identify the knowledge structure and thematic evolution within this research field, a bibliometric search was conducted in October 2025 using the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), specifically covering the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). The search query combined the terms “rural livelihood resilience” and “land use policy,” with the publication period restricted to 2015–2025; all retrieved records were included in the bibliometric analysis.

CiteSpace 6.3.R1 was employed for the bibliometric analysis, covering the period from 2015 to 2025; the g-index was selected for node selection, with the parameter k set to 9. The analysis focused on annual publication trends, burst detection, and keyword co-occurrence to identify key research themes, knowledge linkages, and the evolution of research in the field. To provide a supplementary view of annual publication trends for related themes, Figure 1b also presents statistics on annual publication counts from 2015 to 2025 based on the search terms “rural resilience” and the combination of “rural resilience” and “land management,” which reflect themes frequently identified in the keyword co-occurrence analysis.

Figure 1. Bibliometric overview of rural resilience research from 2015–2025. (a) Countries with the strongest citation bursts during the study period, with red bars indicating the periods of citation bursts; (b) supplementary annual publication trends for the search expressions “rural resilience” and “rural resilience AND land management”; and (c) keyword co-occurrence network showing the major research themes and their connections.

2.2. Core Literature Search and Screening

Building on the bibliometric analysis, the core review was intentionally focused on the intersection between rural livelihood resilience and land-use policy. The literature underpinning the qualitative synthesis was independently re-searched in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) in May 2025, restricted to the SCI-EXPANDED and SSCI indexes, using the terms rural livelihood resilience AND land use policy. No lower publication-year limit was imposed, allowing all records available in WoSCC up to the search date to be considered. Retrieved records were exported with bibliographic information, including publication year, publication date, source journal and abstract, and were initially screened for relevance on the basis of titles and abstracts. Studies were eligible if they provided substantive evidence addressing at least one of the following research questions: (1) how household or rural livelihood resilience is conceptualized and measured; (2) which factors shape farmers’ livelihood resilience; and (3) through what mechanisms land-use policies, land institutional arrangements or land-use transitions influence farmers’ livelihood resilience and its associated outcomes. The search identified 496 records. After duplicate removal and title-and-abstract screening, 161 articles were retained for full-text assessment. Application of the eligibility criterion described above during full-text review resulted in a final sample of 81 independent studies for qualitative synthesis. The complete study-selection process is presented in Supplementary Figure S1.

2.3. Data Extraction and Qualitative Synthesis

Full texts of the 81 included studies were reviewed and systematically coded using a structured data-extraction matrix (Supplementary Table S1). Extracted information included definitions of farmers’ livelihood resilience, research questions, resilience measures, key influencing factors, farmers’ coping and adaptive responses, principal findings, relevant land-use policies or institutional arrangements, evidence on policy–resilience relationships, and reported limitations and future research directions. Where information was not reported or was not applicable, the corresponding cells were left blank; no information was inferred or supplemented beyond that provided in the original studies. To further assess the credibility of the evidence base, methodological quality was appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT, 2018) [30]. MMAT was applied to 58 empirical studies; the remaining 23 conceptual, review, or modeling studies fell outside its design categories (Supplementary Table S2).

The qualitative synthesis was initially structured around the three research questions and subsequently refined through comparative full-text analysis. Recurring themes included resilience concepts and measures, influencing factors, land policy instruments, changes in livelihood resources, farmer responses and policy outcomes. Across these themes, we identified a recurrent analytical pathway linking policy instruments, changes in livelihood resources, farmer responses and resilience outcomes. The resulting responses were further interpreted in terms of buffering, adaptive and transformative capacities, providing the basis for the conceptual framework used in the subsequent analysis.

Given the methodological heterogeneity of the included studies, evidence was interpreted jointly according to study design and study-specific methodological quality. Quasi-experimental and longitudinal studies with fewer methodological concerns provided comparatively stronger evidence for assessing policy-related effects, whereas cross-sectional studies were used primarily to identify associations. Qualitative, case-based, and modeling studies were used mainly to elucidate mechanisms and contextual variation. Accordingly, stronger effect statements were made only where the design and analytical strategy of the original study provided a clear basis for such inference.

3. The Development and Definition of Farmers’ Livelihood Resilience

3.1. The Origin and Development of Farmers’ Livelihood Resilience

The concept of resilience derives from the Latin resilio, meaning “to rebound” or “to return to an original state”. Initially used in engineering to describe the capacity of materials or systems to recover after a disturbance, resilience was introduced into ecology in the 1970s as a property of systems exposed to stress or disruption [[19](https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/16/17/1852#B19-agricultur