Orderly and synergistic development of urban-rural integration based on evolutionary game model: A case study in the Jiangxi Province, China

The orderly synergy is crucial to the integrated development of urban and rural areas in China. The orderly synergistic development process can be regarded as a game of balancing the interests of rural and urban areas. Therefore, numerical simulations with scenario analysis using the evolutionary game approach are conducted to investigate the orderly synergistic development of urban-rural integration. The results show that: (1) The values of orderly synergistic benefits of urban-rural integration are negatively correlated with the Nash equilibrium values at the municipal and provincial levels. (2) The orderly synergistic benefits of policy and market environments have different strategic choices and behavioral constraints for both urban and rural areas. (3) The benefits of “market-oriented” urban-rural choices are greater than those of “policy-oriented” directions. At the municipal level, the main factors influencing the choice of a “market-oriented” direction are the increased benefits of water resources, land resources, rural population mobility, and urban innovation factors. while at the provincial level, all factors lead to urban-rural trends in a “policy-oriented” direction.