Photovoltaic Poverty Alleviation and Bird Biodiversity Conservation: Evidence from China’s Birdwatching Data

Photovoltaic Poverty Alleviation Project (PPAP), a targeted poverty reduction policy, plays a significant role in China’s anti-poverty campaign. Using panel data for Chinese poverty-stricken counties from 2014 to 2023, this paper measures county-level bird biodiversity based on birdwatching records and employs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the impact of PPAP on bird diversity in these counties. The results show that PPAP significantly enhances bird biodiversity in poverty-stricken counties, and this conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis indicates that PPAP enhances bird diversity through two channels: promoting regional population agglomeration and livelihood substitution and improving environmental quality. Moreover, the higher the level of financial accessibility, the stronger the positive effect of PPAP on bird biodiversity. Further analysis reveals that the biodiversity-enhancing effect of PPAP is stronger in counties with larger average photovoltaic power station scale and lower initial environmental protection levels; in addition, the policy mainly increases the species diversity of unprotected birds. These findings suggest that fully leveraging the positive effects of PPAP can help achieve a win–win outcome between poverty reduction and ecological conservation.