Numerous countries actively consider the human settlement environment and have implemented rural governance strategies to ameliorate the living conditions of rural dwellers. The construction of a rural human settlement environment is an important goal of China’s rural revitalization strategy and improving farmers’ well-being is a key element of China’s policies on agriculture, farmers, and villages. However, whether a rural human settlement environment enhances farmers’ well-being remains untested. By adopting the method of random stratified sampling, this study investigated 1002 farmers inside and outside six nature reserves in Liaoning, China. OLS and ordered probit regression models were used to assess the impact on the well-being and the satisfaction of farmers with their settlement environment around nature reserves from three aspects: the natural ecological environment, the hardware facility environment, and the daily governance environment. The results of this study proved that the construction of a human settlement environment can significantly boost the well-being of farmers. Moreover, the satisfaction towards the natural ecological environment, hardware facility environment, and daily governance environment exerts a substantial impact on the well-being at the significance level of 1%, with a positive sign, showing a stable enhancement role. Among them, the satisfaction with the hardware facility environment was the most essential for improving happiness, with a coefficient of 0.126. A heterogeneity analysis suggests that the positive effect of satisfaction with the human settlement environment on farmers’ well-being within nature reserves was more significant in the natural ecological environment, with a coefficient of 0.244; the hardware facility environment had the greatest positive effect on the well-being of farmers outside nature reserves, with a coefficient of 0.224; and the daily governance environment had a greater enhancing effect on the well-being of farmers both inside and outside nature reserves. Based on these results, it is recommended that governments encourage farmers around nature reserves to participate in wildlife accident insurance, strengthen ecological environmental protection, and enhance the hardware facility environment. Furthermore, local governments should disseminate knowledge of human settlement management to farmers and improve the efficiency of human settlement environment management at the grassroots level. Finally, governments should prioritize human settlement environment development and identify the farmers’ needs of human settlement environment to enhance their well-being.

We used the carbon carrying capacity as an indicator of environmental productivity, clarified the emission reduction thresholds and measures for achieving a carbon neutral tourism destination, and proposed a simple, objective, and universal method for estimating the carbon budget of forest tourism scenic spots with function of both carbon sinks and carbon emissions. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Inventories and the Climate Friendly Parks tool, a carbon emissions list with a clear border and relatively complete content was established to characterize the negative impact of tourism activities on the environment. Forest resource inventory data and the CO2Fix method could be used to accurately calculate the carbon sinks of forest tourism scenic spots. In 2019, the total CO₂ emissions in Shenyang National Forest Park were 1841.445 t. The amount of CO₂ sequestered by the forest was 1336.787 t, accounting for 72.59% of the total CO₂ emissions. Thus, tourism had a net CO₂ deficit of 504.658 t. Electricity consumption, garbage disposal, raw coal consumption, infrastructure construction, and land-use changes of forestland were the top five sources of CO₂ emissions. The augmentation of the carbon pool could be improved by 65.358% of the total budget through forest management. The reduction aims of 133.41%–150.32% could be easily reached through emissions-cutting measures. Based on these results, we suggest several measures for low-carbon sustainable tourism.

Forest food, which possesses enormous potential, has emerged as a significant and promising food source under the all-encompassing approach to food. The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 has enhanced health cognition among residents, impacting household food consumption patterns. In this study, we analyzed data from 6,946 urban households in 14 cities of Liaoning Province to examine the consumption behavior of urban households regarding 4 categories of forest food (forest nuts, forest fruits and vegetables, forest drinks, and forest medicines) before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Various empirical methods were employed, including the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), Ordinal Logit Model, Mediation Effect Model, and Moderation Effect Model. The results revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic positively impacted the “willingness-behavior” consumption behavior of urban residents toward forest food. Health cognition played a positive mediating role in influencing residents’ willingness to pay (WTP) for forest food during the pandemic. Per capita income had a negative moderating effect on the actual purchasing behavior of urban residents toward forest food. Furthermore, differences were observed in the consumption behavior of forest food among residents in cities with different levels of pandemic severity.