Sustainable seasonal land fallowing policy to combat groundwater overdraft in China: Insights from a choice experiment

The Seasonal Land Fallowing Policy (SLFP) is conducted in the North China Plain to address severe groundwater overdrafts. Optimal compensation standards, fallow duration, and reallocating the saved labor to other employment may enhance SLFP's economic sustainability, while planting green manure crops on fallow land promotes its ecological sustainability. However, unclear farmers' preferences for these policy attributes and supporting measures hinder policymakers from implementing more sustainable SLFP schemes. Based on a choice experiment survey with 716 farmers in Hebei province, our estimation indicates that farmers prefer an SLFP scheme with higher compensation, longer fallow durations, and employment support, but are reluctant to plant green manure crops. Based on the results, the compensation level can be reduced from 500 yuan/mu/year to 460 yuan/mu/year if the current SLFP scheme continues to be implemented. More economically and ecologically sustainable SLFP schemes can be achieved with longer fallow durations and the provision of employment support. Additionally, this study explicitly explores the heterogeneity of preferences for the SLFP scheme between small-scale and large-scale farmers in China and proposes differentiated SLFP schemes for each group.