Hum Ecol (2010) 38:675–690 DOI 10.1007/s10745-010-9353-z Rural-to-Urban Labor Migration, Household Livelihoods, and the Rural Environment in Chongqing Municipality, Southwest China Hua Qin Published online: 28 September 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract Rural migration and its relationship to the rural environment have attracted increasing research interest in recent decades. Rural migration constitutes a key compo- nent of human population movement, while rural areas contain most of the world’s natural resources such as land and forests. This study empirically evaluates a conceptual framework incorporating rural household livelihoods as an integrative mediating factor between rural migration and the rural environment in the context of rural-to-urban labor migration in Chongqing Municipality, Southwest China. The analysis draws on data collected through household surveys and key informant interviews from four villages. Results confirm the hypothesis that labor-migrant and non- labor-migrant households differ significantly in livelihood activities including agricultural production, agricultural technology use, income and consumption, and resource use and management. Implications for the subsequent environmental outcomes of rural labor out-migration and corresponding natural resource management and policy in rural origin areas are discussed. Keywords Migration-environment . Mediating factor framework . Migrant households . Non-migrant households . Rural livelihoods . China H. Qin (*) Climate Science and Applications Program, National Center for Atmospheric Research, PO Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307, USA e-mail: huaqin@ucar.edu Introduction Since rural migration (to urban or rural areas, permanent or temporary, internal or international) constitutes a key component of human population movement, and rural areas contain most of the world’s natural resources, such as land and forests, rural migration and its relationship to the rural environment have attracted increasing interest in recent research on population-environment linkages (Bilsborrow 2002; Carr 2009). In the long-running debate on the relationships between population and the environment, early simplistic views of negative linear relationships between population growth and the natural environment have been replaced by a more complicated mediating factor framework (Jolly 1994; Mackellar et al. 1998; Marquette and Bilsborrow 1999). This approach incorporates socio- economic, institutional, technological, and cultural contex- tual factors which modify the relationships between population dynamics and environmental changes. The mediating factor perspective is especially important in investigating the specific mechanisms through which migration affects the environment. The effects of migration on the environment are often complex, and an accurate examination requires comparing the biophysical situation before and after migration. However, such longitudinal data are not usually available, especially in rural areas of developing countries. Moreover, environmental changes can be attributable to a wide range of factors beyond migration. Therefore, a reasonable and efficient research strategy of differentiating environmental impacts of migration is to compare migrant households (or migrants) and non-migrant households (or non-migrants) with respect to activities that have important environmental