How village leaders behave in leading vernacular heritage-based rural regeneration in traditional villages, agent or steward? Field research in traditional villages of the southeast of Chongqing, China

Abstract

Village leaders have a pivotal role to play in vernacular heritage-based rural regeneration, but marginal interest was given to their leader behavior in rural development, even in the highly relevant research there exists somewhat ambiguity in differentiating village leadership and public leadership. Given that village leaders would exhibit complex behavior due to their dual-role responsibility, this paper introduced agency and stewardship theories to identify and analyze their leader behaviors in an agent-steward scale, with the aim to address how and why village leaders behave in preserving and harnessing vernacular heritage for rural regeneration. Fitting for purpose, this paper is designed as a two-phase qualitative research of behavior analysis involving village leaders serving in national traditional villages located in the southeast of Chongqing. National traditional villages are jointly selected by the ministries responsible for heritage conservation and rural development, referring to those with one-or-a-kind historic memory and cultural, artistic and regional characteristics. The first-phase observation figured out that three leader behaviors are clearly present in their leadership: self-serving and group-serving agent-like behaviors, as well as steward-like behavior. The second-phase interview expanded upon three behaviors and assessed their effects on vernacular heritage conservation and sustainable rural development. The results of this study give useful clues on and lend a fresh perspective to village leadership in different regions where it is suggested to preserve and harness heritage as a driving force for rural development.