What drives a sound rural land consolidation program: An analysis from dynamic perspectives of villagers

Abstract

The accelerated urbanization process in China has led to a significant outflow of the rural population, resulting in the emergence of “hollowed-out village” phenomenon. Land consolidation, as a crucial strategy to rural revival, has been predominantly leveraged. However, the study of land consolidation is mainly about interpretation of driving mechanism from static point of view. In highlighting people-oriented development mode, the paper attempts to frame out a dynamic driving mechanism analysis framework through identifying both endogenous factors and exogenous factors from villagers’ perspectives grounded by Triadic Reciprocal Determinism Theory, with which it seeks to decode the evolution of driving mechanisms of land consolidation. Taking Shandong Province as a case study and leveraging on structural equation modeling (SEM), it finds that: 1) The land consolidation performance has been improved driven by both endogenous and exogenous driving factors. 2) The driving forces exhibit an evolutionary pattern, with endogenous forces shifting from integrative force to emotional force; and exogenous forces shifting from administrative force to market force. 3) Community committee plays a limited role in rural land consolidation perceived by villagers. These results further develop Triadic Reciprocal Determinism Theory and indicate a balanced and dynamic development view in implementing land consolidation scheme in rural China. It reveals that driving factor identification and transformation clarification is decisive to a functional rural consolidation scheme. Government should shift its political priorities from infrastructure development and propaganda efforts in its initial stage to market construction and culture reshape in later phase.