Unlocking rural vitality: Assessing the multidimensional impacts of land consolidation on rural comprehensive development capacity in post-poverty China

Land consolidation (LC) has increasingly been recognized as a key policy instrument for advancing rural revitalization in post-poverty China. However, its multidimensional impacts on rural development have not been fully investigated. We develop an analytical framework of the land consolidation-social ecological system (LC-SES). Drawing on remote sensing data and village-level panel data from 2014 to 2023, we employ a continuous difference-in-differences model and an event study method to examine the multidimensional impacts of LC. The results show that the average rural comprehensive development capacity (RCDC) of the study area has more than doubled over the past decade. Regression estimates suggest that each additional RMB 1 billion invested in LC projects is associated with an increase of about 12 percent in RCDC. Moreover, dynamic effects observed in the economic and ecological subsystems of LC project villages demonstrate a strong temporal synergy, suggesting that LC holds long-term potential for balancing production and ecological sustainability. Mechanism analysis reveals that farmland expansion, land transfer, and organizational governance are the primary pathways through which LC contributes to income growth among village collectives and rural households. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that the effects of LC are more pronounced in poor, non-mountainous, and large-scale villages, highlighting its potential for poverty alleviation, ecological adaptability, and scale economies. This study contributes to the theoretical advancement of the SES framework in land use policy research and offers empirical insights into the systematic role of LC in driving rural transformation.