Exploring spatial restructuring of villages and towns in rural China: Insights from villagers’ subjective willingness

Abstract

The spatial patterns of rural settlements are theoretically assumed to be a town-led centralized pattern in which the town is the center and the villages are the periphery. However, with the improvement of rural transportation infrastructure and the urbanization of lifestyles, rural residents' locational choices of residence and employment become increasingly diversified, catalyzing the spatial redistribution of residence and employment functions to reorganize the spatial patterns of towns and villages. To bridge the literature gap in understanding rural spatial restructuring driven by the changes of residence and employment functions, this paper analyzed villagers' subjective willingness to live and work in the town and explored rural spatial restructuring mechanisms by using survey data covering 1158 villagers from 55 townships in China. The survey results showed that villagers' willingness to live and work in the town is not consistent, and the former is usually weaker than the latter. Individual preferences and environmental characteristics together contribute to different willingness. A multinomial logistic model was constructed to explore villagers’ expectations for four spatial patterns, namely town-led centralized (TC) pattern, concentrated residence (CR) pattern, concentrated employment (CE) pattern, and decentralized (DC) pattern. Villagers have different preferences for different patterns. The location, industry, amenities of the town mainly determine the evolution towards different spatial patterns. The findings open up a novel perspective for understanding rural spatial restructuring and support for optimizing spatial patterns of villages and towns.