Effect of Compensation of Public Welfare Forests on the Quality of Natural Forests Based on the PSM-DID Model

The integration of natural forest protection and public welfare forest management is the practice innovation of China’s ecological civilization. Whether and how to achieve the integrated management of the two forests has become a research focus, since the commercial logging of natural forests was not allowed comprehensively. Based on the theoretical analysis and proposition of the hypothesis, this study empirically tested the effect of public welfare forest compensation policies on natural forest quality with forest resource inventory subcompartment data in 2007 and 2020 from Longquan, Kaihua and Anji Counties, utilizing the Propensity Score Matching-Difference in Difference (PSM-DID) model. The results showed that the compensation policies of public welfare forest had a significant and positive effect on the quality of natural forests in the situation where other conditions were kept constant and natural condition, time effect and regional effect were controlled.Therefore, this paper puts forward some suggestions of achieving the integration of natural forests protection and public welfare forests compensation as early as possible and strengthening the protective management of natural forests, in order to improve the overall quality of natural forests.