ABSTRACT Rural people seek diverse opportunities to increase and stabilise their welfare. An understanding of factors that influence livelihood strategies adopted across rural households can further improve policy-making. This study identifies livelihood strategies adopted by smallholder farmers and the factors influencing the choice of their strategy. A structured questionnaire was administered to 400 randomly selected rural households from the Umzimkhulu and Ndwedwe local municipalities in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. Principal component analysis (PCA) and K-means cluster analysis were used to analyse the outcomes. The application of PCA on dummy variables depicting participation in livelihood activities reduced the number of dimensions. Next, PCA factor loadings served as input into K-means cluster analysis; K-means clusters represented household livelihood strategies. Multinomial logistic regression applied to the K-means clusters determined factors influencing the choice of livelihood strategies at the household level. The results indicate that years of formal education, household size, dependency ratio, arable dryland area accessed by the household, and savings of household heads, the location of the household and source of agricultural information were the main determinants of livelihood choice. These findings suggest that policymakers should design policies that are sensitive to household-level characteristics in promoting livelihood strategies.

中文翻译：

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南非夸祖鲁-纳塔尔省小农户的生计战略及其决定因素

摘要 农村人口寻求各种机会来增加和稳定他们的福利。了解影响农村家庭采用的生计策略的因素可以进一步改进决策。本研究确定了小农采用的生计策略以及影响其策略选择的因素。对来自南非夸祖鲁-纳塔尔省 Umzimkhulu 和 Ndwedwe 地方自治市的 400 个随机选择的农村家庭进行了结构化问卷调查。使用主成分分析（PCA）和K-means聚类分析来分析结果。PCA 在描述参与生计活动的虚拟变量上的应用减少了维度的数量。接下来，PCA 因子载荷作为 K-means 聚类分析的输入；K-means 集群代表了家庭生计策略。应用于 K 均值聚类的多项逻辑回归确定了影响家庭层面生计策略选择的因素。结果表明，正规教育年限、家庭规模、抚养比、家庭可耕种的旱地面积、户主的储蓄、家庭所在地和农业信息来源是生计选择的主要决定因素。这些研究结果表明，政策制定者在促进生计战略时应设计对家庭层面特征敏感的政策。结果表明，正规教育年限、家庭规模、抚养比、家庭可耕种的旱地面积、户主的储蓄、家庭所在地和农业信息来源是生计选择的主要决定因素。这些研究结果表明，政策制定者在促进生计战略时应设计对家庭层面特征敏感的政策。结果表明，正规教育年限、家庭规模、抚养比、家庭可耕种的旱地面积、户主的储蓄、家庭所在地和农业信息来源是生计选择的主要决定因素。这些研究结果表明，政策制定者在促进生计战略时应设计对家庭层面特征敏感的政策。