Background: Due to the great burden of family and the conflicts among family, society and career roles resulting from migrant working, rural women suffer more conflicts between work and family and need more social attention. Previous studies of the conflicts between family and work mainly focus on the group of career women, and there is a lack of the research on the conflicts between work and family of rural women, which needs to be systematically and further studied. Methods: This study used a sample survey of 380 rural women in rural areas of Sichuan Province to measure rural women’s cognition of work-family, coordination and handling of conflicts, post-conflict choices, and subjective well-being; the study constructs an ordered multi-class logistic regression model to explore the impact of work-family conflict on the subjective well-being of rural women in rural regions. Results: The study result shows that: (1) The level of subjective well-being of rural women is generally high, and 70% of women feel satisfied or very satisfied. (2) The factor which impacts the subjective well-being among rural women most is work-interfering-with-family conflict, followed by work-family balance and confidence in conflict coordination. Conclusion: This study can enhance our understanding of rural women in rural areas, and provide a reference for formulating policies to improve people’s life satisfaction.

The effects of risk perception and sense of place on disaster preparedness have been widely reported. However, most studies have only demonstrated weak relationships and it is unknown whether these are applicable to China. This study investigated such relationships in hazard-threatened areas of the Three Gorges Reservoir area in southwestern China. Data were collected from 348 farming households in landslide-prone areas. Binary logistic and Tobit regression models were constructed to determine whether risk perception and sense of place influence landslide preparedness. The results show that: (1) Farming households’ awareness of the need to prepare for disasters was relatively low, and disaster preparedness behaviors were mainly based on self-learning. Among the 348 sampled households, 67% exhibited no disaster preparedness behavior, and only 2% adopted four of the five types of disaster preparedness behaviors. About a quarter of farming households consciously learned disaster-related knowledge. (2) Risk perception and sense of place had important influences on disaster preparedness. Respondents who received higher scores on the perception of the probability of a landslide, the threat of a landslide, and the place dependence variables were more likely to adopt a greater number of disaster preparedness behaviors. Respondents with higher scores on the perception of controllability in the case of a landslide were less likely to adopt a greater number of disaster preparedness behaviors. Additionally, individual and household socioeconomic characteristics—education, loss, distance from hazard site, information acquisition channel, and housing material—were all related to household disaster preparedness behavior. This study contributes to the current literature by improving the understanding of the relationships of risk perception and sense of place to disaster preparedness in farming households threatened by geological disasters in southwestern China.

Purpose: Previous studies focused on the influence of outsourcing (labor division) on productivity, especially in the industrial economy. However, few studies have focused on how labor division in agriculture affects agricultural productivity. To bridge this gap, this study uses survey data from 4864 farmer households in China to explore the impacts of outsourcing on agricultural productivity.Design/methodology/approach: This study employs an endogenous switching regression to account for selection bias and a counterfactual framework to measure the degree of influence. Thus, this study analyzes determinants of outsourcing and the impacts of outsourcing on agricultural productivity under the same framework.Findings: The results revealed the following. (1) Farmer households with the below average productivity tended to outsource; conversely, farmer households with the above average productivity tended to cultivate the land by themselves. (2) Productivity increased by 25.61% for farmer households who choose to outsource. Moreover, if nonoutsourcing farmer households would choose to outsource, their productivity would increase by 10.86%.Originality/value: This study furthers one’s understanding of how outsourcing affects agricultural productivity among farmer households.