Abstract:As the main economic activity body and the basic decision-making unit, the peasant household has been become the important element which influence the environment. Now, we should understand environmental impact of the peasant household in order to find the measures to solve the complex environment problem. In the paper, the study area includes Zhangye,Gannan Tibetan autonomous prefecture and Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture, the ecological footprint was taken as the index of the environmental impact. Using the field survey data, we calculate the ecological footprint of the peasant household, then compare environmental impact of peasant household in the Han,Tibetan and Hui nationality region, and use correlation analysis and the STIRPAT model to break down the function of human factors in the environmental impact. The results show: (1)Environmental impact of the peasant household in Gannan is higher than that of in Zhangye and Linxia, per capita ecological footprint of the peasant household in Gannan is 1.538ghm2/person. Moreover, impact of the peasant household on arable land, grassland and forestland in Gannan is higher than that of in Zhangye and Linxia, however, impact on water area, building area and fossil energy area in Zhangye is higher than the other area; (2) The diversity of the impact of the peasant household on arable land in these areas is also small, but that of the impact on grassland,forestland and water area is quite large; (3) The labour/householder education level, the affluence level, non-agricultural level and family size are the main driving factors of the environmental impact, increasing the labour/householder education level and non-agricultural level will slow down the environmental impact, but improving family size and affluence level will aggravation the environmental impact, however, the change speed of the environmental impact caused by them exceed that of themselves;(4) The national characteristics can significantly influence the peasant households' environmental impact. Within the range of calculated data, the analysis result supports the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis.
