Framing Effect and Pastoralist Decision Making Behavior Regarding Lambing Time-An Analysis from Inner Mongolia, China

Grassland is the largest terrestrial ecosystem in China. However, it is seriously degraded. Lower stocking rates have been necessary for rehabilitating the degraded grassland. In order to rehabilitate the grassland the government proposed the “balancing animals and grass” policy. However, it has been resisted by pastoralists. (Brown et al., 2009). The reasons for the policy’s failure have been widely discussed. To date, there has been a lack of discussion on explicitly addressing the role of pastoralist behavior regarding stock numbers and lambing time. The pastoralists continue to maintain their traditional stocking rate, and take short-term adaptive measures to balance their animal’s needs with feed supply. Winter lambing is considered as one of efficient measures rehabilitating grasslands degradation. In northern China, however, those pastoralists generally buy little forage for sheep and lambs. Because they would graze the livestock, including lambs, on the grassland in the early growing season. However, early season growth on the grasslands is unpredictable and winter lambing could increase the grazing pressure and exacerbate degradation problems. If pastoralists have enough forage supply and sheds for stall-feeding, they could choose to lamb in winter and at the same time comply with the grazing-rest policy. Under the Household Contract Responsibility System, the pastoralists hold the grasslands and breed livestock themselves, and their decisions have both direct and indirect impact on the balance between animal needs and forage supply. However, unpredictable markets and climate change result in pastoralists facing increasingly more decisions making about lambing time and buying forage. Thus, it is becoming imperative to understand how pastoralists make decisions and the biases they exhibit. The framing effect is observed when a decision maker’s risk tolerance depends on how the alternatives are described. Many empirical studies have been conducted to demonstrate and investigate the framing effect in different contexts. Similarly, many theories have been developed to explain human decision making behavior based on gains and losses. However, little is known about pastoralist decision making behavior from a “framing effect” perspective, especially in pastoral areas of northern China. Early research has indicated agricultural decisions vary substantially by ethnicity (Heinimann et al., 2013). In northern China, the majority of pastoralists are with Mongolian background. They have their own culture, values and norms. While most Han pastoralists migrated from agricultural areas, generally take into account more economic interests when making decisions, More importantly, for all those pastoralists who livelihoods depend solely on grassland resources, stockbreeding not only supplies them with monetary income, but also many economic outputs. All these aspects have a substantial impact on pastoralists’ making decisions. Their decisions are an important factor to consider in policy formulation and implementation. However, the importance of ethnicity tends to be ignored in addressing grassland sustainability issues. The objective of this study is to explore the pastoralist decision-making behavior about lambing time, and to propose potential and efficient measures for controlling degradation problems for sustainable grassland development