Search

China is gradually and directly making rural collective land available on the land market. It is important to understand how stakeholders collectively treat and manage this land, and if this collective action leads to effective and sustainable results. This paper, however, revises Ostrom's framework of collective action by constructing the joint analysis of social capital, trust, and cooperation performance, in order to better capture the distinction between voluntary action and enforced action of stakeholders towards a sustainable goal. We analyze the role of voluntary collective action through higher-order structural equation modeling (HSEM), applied to a database consisting of 324 households in Jiangsu Province, China, collected in 2022 and 2023. The results suggest that social capital effectively promotes villagers' trust in policy implementers by establishing new institutions, increasing actors' trustworthiness, and improving channels of information exchange, and the first two means are more effective than the latter. We also demonstrate the significant positive effect of trust on cooperation performance, with trusting relationships with familiar groups and the credible behavior of policy implementers affecting performance outcomes of collective action. Moreover, social capital drives cooperation performance through the mediating effect of mutual trust that it breeds. With this revised framework and verified hypotheses one can thus create more effective policies to avoid inequality and informality in the land marketization process in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism development is an important topic within tourism and regional studies. However, previous studies have lacked focus regarding the coexistence of spatial and temporal effects, where the mixed analysis of global and local influencing factors has been limited. This paper employs a semiparametric GWR model to explore the spatiotemporal relationships between regional tourism economy and influencing variables. Results indicate that in the areas of better tourism economic development, spatiotemporal lag factors play a key promotion role, while in the areas of lower tourism economic development, spatiotemporal lag factors play a restraining role. In comparison with traditional analysis methods, semiparametric GWR was found to be superior in analyzing regional tourism economies as it accounts for spatiotemporal relationship at both global and local scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature in population and development studies has examined the positive effects of rural-urban migration on the livelihoods and living standards of migrant workers. Less attention has been paid to the rural households trapped in poverty despite having family members working in the city. Drawing on a survey of rural households in the north of Jiangsu province, China, this paper examines how migration and an urban income affect the consumption patterns of poor rural households. The results confirm that among the rural poor, households with migrating members tend to have higher disposable incomes than immobile households. However, considerably higher living costs in the city compel these migrant households to be frugal and often split the family between the city and the rural home to minimize total household expenditures. Their incomes are often depleted by the costs of essential goods and services, such as housing, education, medication, transport, and other daily necessities. The findings reflect that many of China's poorest rural households are on the horns of a dilemma—having a job in the city mitigates poverty but often leads to the misery of family separation and the need to endure harsh living conditions for family members in the city. This urges policy changes to facilitate family migration and enhance rural welfare and resource provisions, especially in healthcare and education. • Migration affects the consumption patterns of poor rural households. • Urban livelihoods mitigate poverty but cause family separation and substandard living. • Policy recommendations to facilitate family migration and enhance education and healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The space in the process of urbanization is undergoing a great transition from physical space to social space. The relations between society and space become more important and complicated than ever. As a critical social theory, production of space means that urbanization has been reshaped by social factors or forces like capital, power and class, so that the urban space finally becomes their production and process. Based on socio-spatial dialectic, the main methodology of spatial production, urban space (re)shapes social relations and processes. The different spatial scales have and continuously produce the different social relations. In the researches about production of space, little work has been done on the index system to assess the extent of production of space and to analyze middle-scale region. This article designs a set of simple index system to reflect the spatial influences of capital, power as well as class, and chooses Jiangsu Province as a typical case because of its rapid and differential urbanization to indicate the process of spatial production from 2000 to 2015. In this index system, capital is represented by fixed-asset investment, real estate investment and foreign direct investment; power is represented by the index of the constructed urban land area; the index reflecting class is the urban-rural income ratio. Based on the analysis of these changing indexes, this paper finds that urbanization in Jiangsu is hybrid process: the forces from capital and power greatly contribute to rapid urbanization and high urbanization level, however, the gaps among the three sub-regions in the province and rural-urban income inequality have not decreased accordingly. Conversely, these gaps enlarge in some periods. This kind of urbanization pattern is characterized by large-scale spatial expansion, and is driven by capital and power, but there are many latent social risks and spatial inequality. In the process of spatial production, space and society interact, entangle and (re)shape the pattern of urbanization in the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing problems in China have recently aroused wide range of interests of scholars. Housing demand, which is a classical discussing point in academia, also acts as reference for governments to enact loose, tense or neutral housing policies. However, studies scrutinizing the housing demand structure, particularly from consumption and investment perspectives are scant. Existing researches have mostly focused on the mature housing market in large cities in China, and the housing market in small cities has rarely been addressed. In this study, housing demand is deliberated in two respective dimensions of rent/own and consumption/investment demand. Price elasticities are obtained through formulating demand functions of each demand category with micro-data collected through questionnaire survey in small cities in Jiangsu. Underpinned by the set of elasticity coefficients, detailed housing demand structure can be calculated proportionately. Results suggest that the improvement and investment housing needs have outweighed basic consumption demand in small cities in Jiangsu Province. Housing price rising has a promoting effect on residential housing demand, which is in stark contrast to the existing studies on price elasticity of housing demand in large cities in China. Factors of urbanization significantly influence the housing need of residents in small cities. Improvement of urbanization rate would contribute to the consumption demand booming while prosperity of tertiary industry would boost improvement and investment housing demand. Not only could the analytic methodology of housing demand structure demonstrated in this paper be referenced, but the empirical answers carry vital implications for governments implementing diverse policy design in large and small cities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has experienced a massive rural-urban migration process since the mid-1980s. During the period, a new generation of rural migrants has increasingly accounted for a large segment of the total floating population. The younger generation differs from its predecessors with respect to certain characteristics, exhibiting improved human capital, less farming experience and a stronger desire for urban settlement. This generation prefers to settle in urban areas rather than return to rural hometowns to farm. Although the topic of permanent migration and urban settlement is an issue confronting China and other countries, research focussing on cohort differences in urban settlement decisions is limited. The paper, which reports the results of a 2010 survey of rural migrants in Jiangsu Province, China, provides an in-depth comparison of the determinants of urban settlement for younger and older generations for different types of urban destinations. Survey respondents were divided into two cohorts based on birth year, and both geographic and socioeconomic factors were examined. Binary logit regression models found that disparities between the two generations were related to differences in the life-cycle stages of the two cohorts, attitudes and behaviours, and recent economic and social transitions in Jiangsu Province. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon smart growth theory to provide an analytical framework of "smart identification" for industrial land to be readjusted. Huai'an city, Jiangsu province, China, is selected as a case example for the developed framework. Unlike the identification method of efficiency orientation for stock industrial land, which emphasizes the core goal of input and output of production factors per unit area, the smart identification framework covers the five dimensions of industrial policy, urban planning, socioeconomic benefits, transportation convenience, and environment protection. The framework pays more attention to the characteristics of high-quality socioeconomic development, including innovation-driven, coordinated, and sustainable development. Industrial land blocks are used as the research unit. A total of 1,552 industrial land blocks are identified for readjustment, covering an area of 4,008.7 hm2 and accounting for 54.3% of the total industrial land area in Huai'an city; this shows that considerable potential exists for adjustment. We argue that the evaluation index selection of intensive industrial land use and the method by which industrial land is identified for readjustment is influenced by the stage of socioeconomic development. The smart identification method is more consistent with the connotation of high-quality development, and more conducive to revealing the current demand and change law of industrial land against the background of industrial transformation and upgrading, which is of great significance with regard to promoting the intensive use and spatial optimization of industrial land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livability, especially the livability of cities, attracts more and more attention in contemporary China. However, our knowledge towards understanding, evaluating, and improving rural livability is still weak. This paper attempts to sort out the concept and connotation of rural livability, put forward an indicator system for evaluating rural livability at village level in Changshu city of Jiangsu province, and thus provide theoretical and methodological support for better implementing national rural vitalization strategy. Rural livability defined as a rural place equipped with the capacity to achieve the aspired or desired quality of life for the residents reflects the combination of environment and life quality concerns. A livable village in Chinese context is conceptualized with substance of survival and revival to livability. The index system established in the article therefore contains five dimensions, namely infrastructure conditions, public services, sanitation situations, employment opportunities, and social engagement. The empirical case study found obvious disparities in the scores of the comprehensive index and each dimension. Specifically, the scores of infrastructure conditions and sanitation situations dimensions are higher than that of the other three. And the total scores of the 222 villages shows an obvious circle structure centered on the county-town. In the process of rural vitalization, we could adopt more precise measures according to the spatial differences of scores of livability, so as to improve the livability of rural areas more effectively. The authors argue that more attention should be paid to strengthen the construction of comprehensive monitoring system for rural livability evaluation and establish threshold value for each evaluation index, and identify and coordinate the livability needs of different groups, such as the elderly, women, children, and migrants. • Rural livability and livable rural were conceptualized. • Indicator system and quantitative methods for rural livability evaluation were put forward. • The livability index of 222 villages in Changshu city was calculated and then analyzed. • Rural livability evaluation can provide valuable information for rural vitalization. • New comprehensive monitoring system for rural livability was put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]