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This special issue contributes to the development economics literature by highlighting the role of information communication and technologies (ICTs) in supporting rural and agricultural development. It is comprised of nine papers. Key findings from this special issue include: (1) internet use increases rural consumption diversity and agricultural productivity; (2) smartphone use empowers rural women in household decision‐making and off‐farm work participation; (3) smartphone‐based agricultural extension services boost rural income growth; (4) a lack of ICT infrastructure and inadequate skills to use digital technologies are two key factors that lead to digital poverty traps for smallholder rural farmers; (5) ICT adoption increases the probability of rural households' access to credit and empowers rural women and farm households in relatively less developed regions to access credit; (6) digital financial inclusion reduces farmers' vulnerability to poverty; and (7) e‐commerce adoption increases both sales prices and marketing costs, but the magnitude of increasing the former is higher than the magnitude of increasing the latter, which finally contributes to a higher gross return. This special issue also proposes practical instruments and implications for advancing the application of ICTs in rural areas to accelerate rural and agricultural development in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of rural e‐commerce in China has caught the attention of economists around the world. Through incorporating rural e‐commerce platform into the general equilibrium model, this paper theoretically analyzes the impacts of rural e‐commerce platform on industrial structure and the potential mechanisms. Then, taking the exogenous policy of Comprehensive Demonstration of National E‐commerce into Rural Areas in China as a quasi‐experiment, this paper constructs a staggered difference‐in‐differences model to empirically examine how rural e‐commerce platforms affect the output proportion of nonagricultural sector with samples of 2305 counties in China from 2009 to 2019. The findings indicate that the construction of rural e‐commerce platform promotes the transformation of industrial structure through technological advances and reduction of transaction costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Gang Canal region of Rajasthan, the cropping pattern changed from a labour intensive crop, cotton, to a mechanized crop, cluster beans. The shift in cropping pattern not only displaced workers from farm wage work but also brought changes in labour hiring contracts with large scale conversion of daily wage rate contracts to piece‐rate contracts. Drawing on a primary survey in a village from Gang Canal region, the paper examines the change in the agrarian relations in rural Rajasthan by analysing the emerging development in the rural labour relations. For piece‐rate work in farm wage work in some parts of Rajasthan, the wage rate is unilaterally decided by the landlords and large capitalist farmers and is denoted as the ‘village rate’. The manual workers have negligible bargaining power vis‐à‐vis the village rate. The conversion of daily wage rate contracts to piece‐rate contracts has enhanced the duration of working day that involves a rise in the rate of surplus value. Access and availability of low wage labour facilitates the accumulation of capital. With the limited availability of employment in the non‐farm sector (in both public and private sectors), workers are compelled to sell their labour power at wages that do not exceed the level of subsistence. The paper concludes with a brief examination of continuum of coercion and varied degree of unfreedom among worker in the village. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Geographer is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As rural decline sweeps the world and draws public attention, it becomes necessary to consider the relationship between urbanization and rural development. The paper investigates this topic in China for the period 1989–2018. The research results find positive contribution of urbanization to rural economy in the research period but with a decreasing tendency. Compared to less developed areas, rural economy of developed regions has become less dependent on cities and can flourish in a larger context with the support of modern transportation and telecommunication technologies. However, those peripheral rural areas tend to face continuous and large‐scale rural–urban migration which has aggravated rural decline. Rural economic growth helps to decrease rural outmigration and people will stay in their hometown with available job opportunities to raise their families and maintain livelihood. The paper proposes balance‐friendly urbanization structure and diversified rural economy to improve rural resilience to meet the challenge of rural decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seminal work of the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services on pollinators, pollination, and food production, informed scientific studies on the understudied impacts of mining on agriculture sub‐sectors. This paper assesses the potential impacts of mining activities on beekeeping as an agricultural sub‐sector, and the flow‐on effects on associated economic values and enterprises to enhance sustainable development. A case study is conducted in the emerging northwest gold mining region of Ghana. The Location Quotient (LQ) and Location Association (La) models are used to explore the economic significance of beekeeping, its spatial links with tree habitats, and mining activities. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used to analyze the spatial interactions between concessions, trees, and beekeeping. The paper finds that districts with LQ < 1 in beekeeping also record LQ > 1 in mining, and La < 50 between beekeeping and mining. The findings are useful for stakeholder decision‐making toward harnessing and leveraging the prospects of mining on integrated rural and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor infrastructure maintenance of basic services in developing countries undermine economic development and sustainability. The process of reactive maintenance on equipment are practiced in many rural projects, resulting in a range of challenges, including high cost, shorter life expectancy of equipment and inefficient use of project engagement time by project teams. This paper proposes the use of low data rate sensors for the monitoring of rural infrastructure to assist in the practice of preventive maintenance in rural projects. The paper argues and demonstrates the importance of on‐going operation and performance monitoring of infrastructure to implement preventive maintenance throughout the life cycle of rural infrastructure projects with the use of a case study—a remote village in rural South Africa. The implementation of preventive maintenance practices in rural projects show that project maintenance budgets can be utilized more efficiently when compared to traditional reactive maintenance. In addition to the reduction of maintenance cost, the implementation of preventive maintenance can lead to better life expectancy of equipment as well as safer operating and maintenance conditions for operators and maintenance teams. Findings reveal that the utilization of low data rate sensors for equipment operation and performance monitoring can support rural development as it assists preventive maintenance solutions, replacing reactive maintenance strategies. The paper further aims to assist project teams working in rural projects to improve support and maintenance of deployed infrastructure and equipment to improve the sustainability of these rural projects. The contribution of this paper is the demonstration of how the implementation of low bandwidth network technologies and sensors can be utilized for operation and performance monitoring in deep rural projects without incurring major costs to support the sustainability of these projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural research and development projects face structural barriers to the equitable participation of women. Applying an intersectional approach can facilitate women to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development within the existing patriarchal and colonial structures, ultimately challenging and subverting these structures. This paper argues that development initiatives must seek to understand the ways of being within specific localised projects, to tailor support and mitigate disadvantage. Through an exploration of two female‐led agroforestry projects in Vanuatu and Fiji, this paper demonstrates how centring the sovereignty of women over their own experience and livelihood aspirations can lead to familial, community and regional wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In global pattern reconstruction, ecological civilization construction and integrated urban–rural development in the new era as well as outlining a new framework for rural development and promoting efficient operation of the coordination mechanism for rural development are urgently required. This paper considers three northeastern provinces of China as an example, attempts to analyze the relationship between the subsystems of rural development, and examines the coupling coordination mechanism of population, land, and industry money in the four‐dimensional system. It explores the evolution path and defects of rural development in Northeast China under the background of transformation from a systematic perspective. We found that the coupling degree of "population‐land‐industry‐money" in rural Northeast China is high, while the coordination degree is low. The degree of spatial and temporal differentiation of the coupling coordination degree gradually increases, and the rural development of each province is highly unbalanced. The results also indicate that the main reasons for the low level of the coupling coordination degree are improved land development levels, a relative shortage of labor force, backward industrial development, and increasingly weak rural investment levels. Finally, this paper illustrates that the main solutions to rural revitalization are stimulating rural investment through policies and promoting the revival of agriculture, with financial support as the starting point, before establishing the linkage and mutual feed development of "population‐land‐industry‐money" in rural areas. The results will help countries, especially developing countries, to further consider methods toward achieving rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial system of rural residential areas is a key carrier to support the high‐quality development of rural residential areas. The effective identification of the space quality and its coordinated characteristics of rural residential areas are helpful to provide scientific basis for rural revitalization. From the perspective of space, the high‐quality development of rural residential area may be seen as a state of spatial coordination aiming at rural revitalization under the high‐level development of material space and social space. Taking Ningjin County of Shandong Province as the research area, this paper discusses the quality characteristics of rural residential areas in plains areas through representative case studies. For this purpose, the quality of material space and social space of these areas, and their coordinated development patterns, are obtained using the entropy weight TOPSIS, the mutual exclusivity matrix, and the coordinate quadrant method. Finally, the paper provides an identification of barriers by the obstacle degree diagnosis model and then proposes some quality improvement strategies for rural revitalization. The results show that: (a) The quality of material space and social space of rural residential areas in Ningjin County are medium and high. (b) The coordinated development patterns of material‐social space of rural residential areas in Ningjin County are characterized by medium‐quality‐led, low‐quality second‐class, high‐quality less. (c) The obstacle factors of high‐quality development of rural residential areas in Ningjin County are mainly reflected in the four dimensions of living space, production space, cultural space, and communication space. (d) Rural revitalization in Ningjin County can be achieved through the coordinated optimization of high‐quality development patterns, the focused improvement of medium‐quality development patterns, and the comprehensive consolidation of low‐quality development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agricultural sector is a cornerstone of social and economic life in the Western Balkan (WB) countries. However, it faces challenges of slow productivity growth, limited access to assets, and vulnerability to external shocks like climate change. Agricultural policies are crucial to enhance productivity, efficiency, and standards compliance in the European Union (EU) integration context. In this context, WB countries have been developing institutional frameworks while steadily increasing budgetary transfers to agriculture and rural development. The paper enables a comparative analysis of the agriculture and rural development support policy in Albania and North Macedonia with focus on main trends and reasons for potential shortcomings in relation to the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Efforts to enhance policy frameworks, institutional capacities, and agricultural productivity will be critical in achieving alignment and fulfilling the aspirations of EU accession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of climate change on the spatial distribution of agricultural production in Turkey between 2004 and 2019. Our findings show that climate change has a pervasive impact on agricultural development. The empirical results show that the average temperature is negatively associated with agricultural land use, grain, and legume production. Moreover, regional variability analyses reveal the nonmonotonic relationships between climatic factors and agricultural output. Climate change hurts agricultural production in northern and central regions the most. This finding points out the ineffectiveness of one‐size‐fits‐all‐type policies for mitigating the adverse effects of climate change in topography with sizeable spatial dissimilarities. Overall, our results suggest that climate change will significantly threaten the evolution of agricultural activities that are critical for regional development. In addition, findings show that spatial spillovers and heterogeneity will be crucial for designing climate change policies for rural and agricultural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to control the growth of agricultural carbon emissions while developing tourism has become the primary issue that needs addressing in the development of rural China. This paper explores the impact of tourism on agricultural carbon emissions and further analyses the mediating effect of labor transfer in this relationship. The analysis is evaluated using provincial panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2007 to 2019 with a sequential regression model. The results show that tourism development increases agricultural carbon emissions, which is more pronounced in areas with advanced economies or higher education levels. Second, labor transfer to nonfarming industries suppresses the increase in agricultural carbon emissions caused by tourism. Finally, (i) the impact of tourism on labor transfer in less developed and less educated regions is limited, and (ii) there is the expectation of large‐scale use of agricultural machinery due to labor transfer in economically developed or highly educated areas. The heterogeneity test shows these two reasons lead to a mediating effect of labor transfer on agricultural carbon emissions in different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart infrastructure is positioned as central to the liveability and viability of rural and regional towns in Australia. The Australian Government's Smart Cities Plan and Regional Connectivity Program includes Smart Investment in regional areas and the New South Wales Government has prioritised connectivity and telecommunications infrastructural development through the Regional Digital Connectivity program. And yet regional and rural communities are typically excluded from the evidence base for smart technologies and services. Local Aboriginal Land Councils are also important stakeholders in managing the digital processes associated with information and infrastructure moving across different Countries. This paper draws on data from the 'It just works!': Regional and rural consumer understandings of smart technologies in North West New South Wales project, including over 130 survey responses and interviews with shire councillors, land councillors, and consumers on smart development and Internet infrastructure in the region. In the areas surveyed, smart regional policy is variously emerging, non‐existent, or assembled from existing policy domains and regulation involving the Internet, telecommunications, regional development, First Nations, and local government. We argue that regional and rural understandings of growth and development are experienced through the infrastructuring processes of Internet quality, availability, and speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of big data, strategy is an indicator that determines business growth and directly guides the sustainable development of business. This paper aims to study the construction of the SWOT (S stands for strength, W stands for weakness, O stands for opportunity, and T stands for threat.) structure analysis model of e‐commerce tourism development strategy based on the experience of big data. Through empirical analysis, it explores the factors that affect the development strategy of e‐commerce business, and proposes practical measures and development directions. Based on big data theory, this paper uses SWOT analysis to analyze the e‐commerce development strategy of China's rural tourism cooperatives in detail, and uses the analytic hierarchy process to analyze the green development direction of e‐commerce tourism enterprises. The experimental results of this paper show that the order of enterprise development strategy selection in the context of big data for tourism electronics is: SO strategy, ST strategy, WO strategy and WT strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Solomon Islands, women's groups play an important role in promoting socially inclusive development and women's empowerment. In this paper, we summarise the experiences of a 5‐year participatory action research partnership to enhance rural livelihood activities based on aquatic foods. The women's savings groups that participated in this research identified solar‐powered freezers as an innovation suitable to their skills and environment. The 12 freezers we used in our partnership to pilot this innovation had tangible benefits. More than 700 unique users accessed the freezers, 3900 kg of fish was stored and over USD6,000 was saved in total; however, accumulation of savings varied greatly between groups. The women's groups demonstrated that operating solar‐powered freezers can be financially viable, and the innovation integrated well with their livelihood activities. This conclusion provides an alternative to dominant development narratives, which tend to focus on building large‐scale infrastructure, and often exclude women. Existing marketing skills and cooperation were strengths on which the women built. Poor‐quality technology was the biggest impediment to success. Solving this basic problem should be a priority for any future cold‐storage initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of a rural community‐driven development programme in Myanmar, which promoted village‐level microfinance for income generation. Utilizing a three‐round household survey consisting of 100 treatment and 50 comparison villages with approximately 8500 households per round, we employ difference‐in‐differences and two‐stage least squares estimations. Our analysis shows three key findings. First, the programme significantly increased access to microfinance, primarily for production. Second, formal and informal finance were substituted in part with village‐level microfinance. As a result, treated households were less likely to borrow money from formal banks or informal lenders such as their relatives, friends or neighbours. Third, the village‐level microfinance nudged rural households to harvest, yield and sell their products more, which led to increase in seasonal income. Our study suggests that microfinance targeted for productive investment can significantly improve income of rural households in developing economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As land is one of the most important production factors in rural areas, it is becoming an important challenge for rural revitalization strategy to realize land value and promote the socioeconomic development of villages through the collective action of self‐organized collective land use. Various studies have discussed the relationships among land governance, rural revitalization and self‐organization, but few studies have focused on village cadres' roles and village rules. This paper aims to establish an analytical framework to explore these two operating mechanisms of self‐organization in collective land use. Two villages in eastern China and one village in western China are selected as typical cases to demonstrate how collective land use is self‐organized by village cadres' roles and village rules. The results indicate that village cadres play roles in the entrepreneurial spirit and resource access capacity to promote village economic and social development. In the utilization of collective land for farmers to live in peace and work happily, the configuration of rules at the village level to regulate the behaviour of villagers is a qualification on demand and "see who can take part", cost sharing and benefit sharing, graduated sanction and supervision. The analysis in this article may provide an understanding of the mechanism driving the promotion and improvement of land self‐organization, which has important policy implications for China and other developing countries adopting this mode to promote regional economic development in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research and policy advice by international development organizations have, by their own account, sought to reverse a prior neglect of conditions in agriculture and rural areas. In pursuit of this, they have developed a vision of dynamic but incremental development in rural areas, anchored in a smallholder‐based and economically diversified market economy. This vision, articulated in the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report and continuing to animate research and policy advice today, presents itself as a solution to persistent poverty in the world's least developed countries. This paper adopts a historical sociological lens to use the case of Japan, in the period from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the opening decades of the twentieth, to assess how realistic this vision is. This analysis shows that the lessons of Japan's experience are chastening for this vision of rural development. The mechanisms of growth in Japan were remarkably similar to those advertised by the World Bank's vision. However, its rural economic dynamism was based on deep socioeconomic inequalities and brought improved material conditions and greater economic security to agricultural households only with excruciating slowness, if at all. Rather than demonstrating the potential of incremental, market‐oriented rural development to offer a path towards widespread poverty reduction, Japan instead serves as a warning of this development model's limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural shrinking is an ongoing phenomenon in many parts of Europe. Against this backdrop neo‐endogenous rural development has been gaining support as a conceptual and policy approach which stress the combination of local and external actors, resources and forces for enhancing an integrated development of rural areas. Within this governance framework rural social enterprises have been stressed as potential key actors contributing to rural development. This paper explores, through 36 semi‐structured interviews with diverse stakeholders of two Irish community‐based rural social enterprises, the role of these organizations in contributing to a neo‐endogenous development. Our findings show how their mobilization of the social attachment of their members, their collective character and their delivery of tangible results have been key to develop collaborative dynamics with stakeholders from different sectors and situated at various spatial scales. Moreover, these organizations have accommodated global‐exogenous forces buffering their effects through locally‐focused solutions which address the needs of their rural communities, despite their incapacity to address the causes of these global‐exogenous trends. We conclude that rural community‐based social enterprises can play a relevant role in contributing to neo‐endogenous development, however, institutional frameworks that address the diversity of rural areas and that enhance balanced collaborations among different rural development stakeholders are a precondition to unlock their potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore how social innovation can provide a range of ecosystem services to local people while supporting public policies and private sector initiatives in delivering successful and innovative food distribution channels. In the Mediterranean basin, the status of commercial fish stocks is critical. In this sense, small‐scale, low‐impact fishing is a way to sustainably utilise socially innovative practices in the use of natural assets and to provide support to rural livelihoods while having minimal impacts on the marine environment. We use an innovative evaluation method, based on the integration of qualitative information with quantitative indicators, to assess social innovation initiatives and their impacts. The use of the methodology is demonstrated on the example of the project A Box of Sea, Greece. The results obtained show that this social initiative provides a novel food consumption and distribution model aiming at making low impact fishing more economically viable, and therefore achieving a triple sustainability for the sector (environmental, social, and economic). We identify third sector social innovation schemes as key tools to develop novel distribution systems supporting local communities (providing employment, fostering new networks and collaborations across fishers), while improving governance practices of the current fishing sector by creating a fairer market that protects the marine environment. Our findings provide a foundation upon which future evaluations of similar projects can build and compare. Such comparisons are crucial in determining patterns related to the innovation transfer processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social innovations are grassroots processes aiming to achieve impacts beyond an individual level and towards a broader societal good. The environmental dimension of impacts refers to any direct change to the environment resulting from social innovation activities, products, or services, which are not addressed by pre‐existing systems. In this paper, we determine the role of social innovation in addressing environmental impacts by analyzing a database of social innovation examples in European and circum‐Mediterranean rural areas, compiled within the H2020 Project SIMRA. We conceptualize the overall aim of environmentally‐focused social innovation initiatives as furthering the sustainable development of their territories. To address the environmental impacts of initiatives in a structured way, we use the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) classification, to describe social innovation environmental impacts in relation to specific targets. We analyzed 238 initiatives from the SIMRA catalog and associated initiative websites to identify and classify their direct environmental impacts. Our results indicate that 68% of the cases have at least one direct environmental impact that aligns with a SDG target. The most common impacts are related to sustainable natural resource management (SDGs target 12.2), sustainable food production systems (2.4), and equal access to land (2.3). This SDG‐based classification proved to be a useful analytical tool for categorizing internationally policy‐relevant environmental impacts of social innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural disasters affect economic activities and welfare of small‐scale producers in developing countries, but may also offer opportunities to reinvest in productive asset, economic capital, and new technologies for future economic prospects. This paper investigates the impacts of a livelihood recovery project that provided access to finance and rehabilitated communal infrastructures in the coastal communities of Tamil Nadu, India which were severely affected by the 2004 tsunami. We replicate the project's eligibility criteria to build the counterfactual to identify control households based on the validation of secondary data and administrative records. Using data from a carefully designed primary survey, we estimate the impacts of providing access to finance and rehabilitating communal infrastructures on economic and livelihood outcomes. Results indicate positive and significant impacts on income, asset and food security. These impacts are mainly driven by improved access to finance provided and participation in groups. Findings highlight the importance of ensuring access to finance for sustainable economic recovery among small‐scale producers, particularly in the aftermath of natural disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In rural areas, social and economic differentiation profoundly impact rural development patterns, which, in return, impacts rural village social and economic structures and the land transfer decisions of rural households residing within the village. Research on agricultural land transfer has rarely been discussed under the lens of the differentiated socioeconomic structure of rural villages, as well as rural governance capacities. This paper contributes to the existing body of research on the determinants of rural land transfer by examining the role of village socioeconomic differentiation and rural governance based on a quantitative analysis of factors at different scales. The results show that: (1) compared with clan‐based unity structure, kinship‐based split structure and dispersed structure have a positive effect on household land out‐transfer and a negative effect on land in‐transfer. (2) The homogeneity of residents had a negative impact on out‐transfer, while the financial revenue of the village had significant positive influences on households' out‐transfer. (3) The higher the trust in cadres and the evaluation of the local government, the greater the tendency of households to transfer land in, but none of this effect is significant. (4) The socialized agricultural services and the share of non‐farm have significant effects on land transfer. Moreover, households with better geographical conditions, such as those near the county capital and towns, are more likely to transfer their land out. These findings offer significant insights for the management of agricultural scale and the revitalization of rural areas in China, while also offering valuable ideas for the implementation of differentiated agricultural control and rural governance policies in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the institutional root of China's rural industrialization to a historical policy, which paired factories in urban areas with people's communes in the countryside during the Send‐Down Movement in the 1970s. The policy, initially intended to improve the lives of sent‐down youth (SDY), is believed to have provided some initial impetus for industrial development in rural areas before the marketization reform that began in the late 1970s. Based on a manually collected county‐level panel dataset of Zhejiang Province, we find that following the implementation of the pairing policy in 1974, counties that received a higher concentration of SDY, relative to their rural population, achieved faster growth in per capita industrial output of commune enterprises. Our results are consistent with various historical accounts. In addition, our tentative evidence shows that the pairing policy had a prolonged effect on rural economic development, lasting into the 1980s. Overall, our findings reveal the importance of some pre‐reform institutions in shaping China's unique paths towards industrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agrotourism in Vietnam has been identified as one of the strategies used to achieve green growth and countryside modernisation, and it is often included as part of the national and local agenda. In this paper, we examine agrotourism in a village in the periphery of Hội An city (an international tourism hub in central Vietnam) to question tourism's interaction with ongoing development processes. More specifically, we aim to understand the impact of fast peri‐urbanisation on agrotourism and the impacts of agrotourism on people's daily lives, specifically when it comes to physical changes in their living environment, tensions in their social life and their concerns about the future. Our analysis is supported with data generated from interviews with farmers, local officials, tourism workers and tourists. We find that agrotourism products lacked authenticity and farming was not of great interest for tourists, yet the state's investment in the village tended to favour spaces and infrastructure that could attract more tourists and generate profit, to the detriment of cultural infrastructure. Land speculation and an unequal distribution of income were the main tensions in the village along with farmers' concerns about their rural heritage, income diversification and environmental quality. As such, agrotourism in the village has been driven by rapid urbanisation and mass tourism, creating a competition between a consumption activity and a productive activity. Those are important parameters that future policymakers need to take into consideration in order to sustain the city's food production and tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the relationship between city size and rural intergenerational mobility using prefecture‐level data in China. We find that intergenerational mobility in rural areas is positively related to urban population of the affiliated cities. This correlation is partially driven by better coverage of secondary and university education for the rural young who reside close to large cities. Moreover, our further investigation shows that the return to high school education is less dependent on parent incomes around larger cities for rural young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban expansion and the demand for sustainable regional economic development make rural land a resource base for spatial regeneration, transformation, and upgrading. From the perspective of land development rights, this paper analyzes the rural spatial transformation mechanism and rural governance logic in Fenghe village, Guangzhou. The results show that: (1) Fenghe village has experienced three stages of rural forming development, "hollowing" and space transformation. The subject of land development rights has shifted from rural collectives and villagers to external capital enterprises. Rural development pathways and land‐use patterns have changed from single to diversified. The space presents trends of community, commercialization and modernization. (2) Changes in the subjects of land development rights have caused the diversification and transformation of rural space. Homesteads, idle agricultural land, industrial formats, and infrastructure have gradually become standardized, market‐oriented, diversified, agglomerated, and systemized. With the diversification, complexity and consumerization of rural living groups, social relations, subject connections and rural spaces tend to be modern development models. (3) The reconstruction of rural space contains the logic of capital games and negotiated governance. Urban capital reaches a benefit balance between rural collective and villagers, obtains the right to rural land development, and forms multi‐subject collaborative governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water and energy are not only the foundation of high‐quality development in rural areas but also important constraints. Exploring the inner relationship between water, energy, and economic development has important significance for the high‐quality development in rural areas. This paper first constructs the evaluation index system of high‐quality development in rural areas, and quantifies high‐quality development levels in rural China from 1997 to 2021. Second, from the perspective of water footprint, the Super‐slack based measure model is used to calculate sustainable development efficiency under the constraint of water and energy. Finally, kernel density function, Gini coefficient method, and Tobit model are used to explore the evolution trend, regional differences, and driving factors of sustainable development efficiency in rural China. The results show that: (1) Under the constraint of water and energy, sustainable development efficiency in rural China is relatively low, showing a fluctuating trend of first rising and then declining. The efficiency in the western and eastern regions is higher than the national average, while the central region is the lowest. (2) The evolution trend of sustainable development efficiency in rural China, both the eastern and the western regions, shows the characteristics of "decreasing efficiency and weak polarization phenomenon," while the central region shows the characteristics of "decreasing efficiency and no polarization phenomenon." (3) The regional differences illustrate a fluctuating upward trend, which is mainly caused by the hypervariable density, followed by the differences among provinces in the eastern region. (4) Economic development, opening up, and rural marketization are the main factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Introduction: Substance use is a public health issue with a greater burden in rural areas. Barriers to accessing services are exacerbated for rural substance users, with confidentiality concerns, longer travel distances, workforce issues and limited availability of services. This paper presents results from a study exploring substance users' experiences of accessing services in Western Australia's South West. Methods: This qualitative study was informed by phenomenology, and drew from social determinants and socio‐ecological theories. Data were collected through 22 semi‐structured telephone interviews with current and past substance users residing in the South West. Interviews were audio‐recorded and transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis. Results: Two themes were identified: readiness to engage as a three‐way street; and building an ecosystem of recovery networks. Effective engagement with services required multi‐level readiness. Individual readiness was strongly influenced by the social environment, while service readiness required trustworthiness and responsiveness. A number of local access barriers were identified that hindered broader system readiness. Participants experienced recovery as on‐going and require an ecosystem of support with peer support at the centre and a network of healthy relationships established through meaningful connections. Discussion and Conclusions: An effective ecosystem of support for alcohol and other drugs users in the South West should include expanded access to health, community and welfare services, with an emphasis on peer‐led support programs, and strong cross‐sector collaboration to mitigate the access barriers operating at the broader community level. Lessons from our study can inform the development of rural ecosystems of support for alcohol and other drugs users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural resource development, both extractive (oil, gas, mining, and timber) and non‐extractive (tourism, real estate, outdoor recreation), has been found to negatively impact economic prosperity in rural America. One mechanism recently proposed for why this occurs is high levels of labor market concentration, or oligopsony. Oligopsony occurs when there are few employers within a labor market and can lead to suppressed wages and a power imbalance between employers and workers. In this paper, we test the moderating effect of labor market concentration on the relationship between natural resource development and per capita income and poverty in rural America from 2010 to 2016. By comparing results between extractive and non‐extractive development, as well as manufacturing, we show that labor market concentration attenuates the beneficial relationship observed at low levels of specialization in natural resources—particularly for extractive forms of development. Further, by finding no significant relationship between manufacturing specialization and economic prosperity, nor any moderating effect of labor market concentration in the case of manufacturing, we demonstrate that natural resource development and labor market concentration have a unique relationship with rural American economic prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: The growth diagnostics methodology was developed to encourage context‐specific problem‐solving and priority‐setting as a substitute for the universal prescriptions that characterized the Washington Consensus era. While growth diagnostics have been praised and become popular in development planning, little is known about what they do in practice. Purpose: The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a new aid agency, adopted growth diagnostics in 2007 to guide decision‐making for bilateral development assistance after forging nearly 20 agreements informed by existing Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. This study examines how the MCC's adoption of growth diagnostics affected its development investments. Approach and methods: The study used a mixed‐methods approach with primary and secondary data and an interrupted time‐series research design that compares MCC agreements designed with and without growth diagnostics. Findings: The study found that growth diagnostics helped move the MCC's investment portfolio away from multi‐sector integrated rural development programmes aimed at high‐poverty regions towards programmes in fewer sectors concentrated in urban areas with large policy and institutional reform components reminiscent of earlier structural adjustment programmes. The article explains how features of the growth diagnostic methodology largely contributed to these changes. Policy implications: Development planners committed to using diagnostics should employ inclusive growth diagnostics, which modify the original diagnostic in ways that identify and target constraints to achieve pro‐poor growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, contract farming has regained momentum among policymakers and global development agencies as a tool to promote inclusive rural development and responsible investments. Integrating smallholders within global, regional and national agricultural value chains, we are told, represents the sine qua non for alleviating rural poverty. In Uganda, under the label of out‐grower schemes, contract farming is currently undergoing massive expansion, driven especially by the boom in sugarcane cultivation. Drawing from three case studies of sugarcane contract farming in Uganda, the paper re‐politicizes the debate around contract farming by looking at the power relations within which these schemes are embedded. We argue, what is seen in Uganda's expansion is a political dynamic derived both from the major dislocations and dispossessions required to establish the plantation estate and its work force, as well as from the effort to bring many smallholders using unimproved methods on land with sometimes unclear tenure arrangements into contracted arrangements for supplying sugarcane. The result has been highly contentious politics around sugar's expansion, where struggles over land dispossession merge with those around exploitative wage labour, around the loss and transformation of livelihoods, and around debt, power inequalities and environmental harm, a matrix in which state violence and co‐optation are ever‐present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of such project was the analysis of population imbalances in Europe, their challenges, and opportunities, contrasting two different territorial trends: rural areas suffering from depopulation I versus i growing urban areas which increase the concentration of population. The authors support also the idea that a policy only focused on rural areas would fail. Increasingly population are concentrated in urban areas and their surroundings, while rural areas - not all - face depopulation. [Extracted from the article]

This municipality invested in an innovative and timely multi-community collaboration for broadband internet services delivery, involving some four municipalities and five First Nations - a collaborative approach celebrated in the annals of rural development (e.g., Beattie & Annis, [4]; Korsching et al., [43]), and currently being rearticulated in so-called New Regionalism (Daniels et al., [15]). And if the senior government subscribes to moving its constitutionally corralled local government mandate more and more toward "community government" (Douglas, [19]; Tindal, [69]), then the principle of subsidiarity, and the requisites of devolution, endogeneity, and increased self-government, will be the guiding lights here. A further contrast is with the Netherlands where the status of local government in a highly decentralized country is evidenced by the fact that the personnel resources employed by local government are some 60% higher than the entire national government (VNG, [73]). This trajectory has taken us from a thoroughgoing colonial enterprise facilitating the agendas of European geopolitical and mercantile interests relating to resources exploitation, settlement, and the secure reproduction of power structures, via a colonial government, and then the Federal and Provincial governments, through to the post-war maturation of a more independent welfare state and the rapid urbanization of Canadian society, on to today's conditions in a highly globalized, technologically driven world. The founding role of these municipalities, as a provincially sanctioned agency to provide services to property, such as roads maintenance and water and sewage services has, for most municipalities, been transformed to a locally responsible government that is now expected to deliver a diverse range of services to people, community organizations, local businesses, international industrial corporations, and others. [Extracted from the article]

The design of rural development policies and government programmes in support of farm operations and farm households relies on precise estimates of off‐farm labour supply elasticities. However, the wide variation in estimates dilutes their power to predict the magnitude of these targeted interventions. We perform a meta‐analysis of estimates of off‐farm labour supply elasticity to identify systematic factors that influence these estimates. A sample of 137 elasticities is obtained from 43 studies which use data ranging from 1960 to 2012. We examine theoretical assumptions, data availability and empirical specifications, and other study‐specific characteristics. Controlling for potential publication bias, we estimate that the elasticity is approximately 0.64 to 0.77. Results of the analysis show that estimates are affected by modelling choices controlling for self‐selection and life‐cycle elements. However, we found no compelling evidence that study‐specific characteristics of off‐farm labour supply functions, including various measurements of labour supply, explain variation in the elasticities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural shrinking is an ongoing phenomenon in many parts of Europe. Against this backdrop neo‐endogenous rural development has been gaining support as a conceptual and policy approach which stress the combination of local and external actors, resources and forces for enhancing an integrated development of rural areas. Within this governance framework rural social enterprises have been stressed as potential key actors contributing to rural development. This paper explores, through 36 semi‐structured interviews with diverse stakeholders of two Irish community‐based rural social enterprises, the role of these organizations in contributing to a neo‐endogenous development. Our findings show how their mobilization of the social attachment of their members, their collective character and their delivery of tangible results have been key to develop collaborative dynamics with stakeholders from different sectors and situated at various spatial scales. Moreover, these organizations have accommodated global‐exogenous forces buffering their effects through locally‐focused solutions which address the needs of their rural communities, despite their incapacity to address the causes of these global‐exogenous trends. We conclude that rural community‐based social enterprises can play a relevant role in contributing to neo‐endogenous development, however, institutional frameworks that address the diversity of rural areas and that enhance balanced collaborations among different rural development stakeholders are a precondition to unlock their potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusive businesses (IBs) resonate with policymakers seeking to leverage private capital in support of poverty alleviation and sustainable development. In the agri‐food sector, which represents the largest segment of the base‐of‐the‐pyramid (BOP) market and a key source of livelihood for the rural poor, there is limited evidence on their diversity and social value creation mechanisms. This prevents practitioners from identifying impactful IB types and design features. A statistical analysis of 46 cases in Tanzania and Ghana identified four IB types: (1) self‐reliant agribusinesses, (2) domestic plantation companies, (3) social enterprises, and (4) locally‐embedded Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Our findings suggest that socially‐driven and localized IBs hold high impact potential but require significant external support, while more self‐sufficient IBs adopt less socially innovative designs. This study demonstrates the utility of a data‐driven approach to capture the complexity of real‐world IBs, which yielded practical insights for more effective poverty alleviation through business means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to compare the drivers of clustering of rural and urban creative industries in England. We use pre‐pandemic web‐scraped data from 154,618 creative industry organizations in England, and use a novel technique to identify 71 distinct rural creative "microclusters" of geographically proximate creative firms. We then consider the role of place‐based assets and agglomeration in the presence of microclusters at a micro‐level geography and find that the determinants of microclustering are generally consistent between rural and urban areas. On that basis we argue that policies to support creative clusters may drive rural regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Producer organizations (POs) receive substantial attention and policy support, given their potential to contribute to pro‐poor rural development. Here, we first synthesize decades of empirical research in the form of five stylized facts—common and largely unchallenged conclusions—about POs. Then, we explore these stylized facts using several secondary and primary data sets. We confirm some stylized facts, challenge others, and highlight which ones lack empirical evidence to derive policy implications and directions for future research. We highlight largely overlooked low and regionally biased participation rates and suggest that future research should pay more attention to the diverse forms and characteristics of POs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and communication technology (ICT) plays an important role in rural livelihoods and household well‐being. Therefore, this study examines the impact of ICT adoption on farmers' decisions to access credit and the joint effects of ICT adoption and access to credit on household income using 2016 China Labour‐force Dynamics Survey data. Both recursive bivariate probit model and a selectivity‐corrected ordinary least square regression model are employed for the analysis. The results show that ICT adoption increases the probability of access to credit by 12.8% in rural China and empowers rural women and farm households in relatively less‐developed regions to access credit. ICT adoption and access to credit affect household income differently. ICT adoption significantly increases household income, while access to credit significantly reduces it, primarily because farmers do not use the acquired credit to invest in income‐generating farm and off‐farm business activities. ICT adoption has the largest positive impact on household income at the highest 90th quantile. Our findings suggest that improving rural ICT infrastructure to enhance farmers' ICT adoption and developing ICT‐based financial products to enable households to access sufficient funds can improve rural household welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Territorial cohesion is a guiding set of EU principles to achieve sustainable development. However, evidence suggests that within and across rural and peripheral regions in particular, prosperity and social and economic wellbeing continue to lag behind other regions. The aim of this article is to examine how a spatial justice perspective can provide new development insights on rural sustainability. Introducing a spatial justice perspective to a sustainability/territorial cohesion view of rural development, this article explores the scope for alternative framings of rural sustainability based on more place‐based, context‐specific socio‐spatial relations and processes. Drawing on interviews with EU‐based stakeholders mainly representing rural‐based NGOs, it identifies changing values and priorities about rural sustainability linked to notions of spatial justice and fairness. The findings illustrate an evolving local‐level emphasis on rural sustainability as a phenomenon less focused on economic growth and as much on achieving social equity, with associated capacity to frame and agree locally relevant sustainability goals in an inclusive and respectful way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses how and why agricultural digitalisation unfolds in contrasting agricultural sub‐sectors and rural spaces in Europe, with a particular focus on dairy farming. The authors explore the differences and similarities underpinning and produced by agricultural digitalisation and how this intersects with meanings of rural development and the politics of sustainability. Building on qualitative research carried out in the regions of Uppsala (Sweden) and Calabria (Italy), the article unveils the contradictory nature of agricultural digitalisation as a process intertwined with the capitalist development of agriculture that raises key political questions. The cases of Uppsala and Calabria, in particular, show that the transformation of dairy farming through automation and digitalisation is uneven and combined, being deeply connected to how politics of sustainability and rural development are embedded—and negotiated—in specific agrarian settings. The authors discuss their empirical findings in terms of new agrarian questions in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the Geographical variations in the outreach of information and communication technology (ICT) diffusion and its effects on rural development across 341 Community Development (CD) blocks of West Bengal. The study is based on secondary data. Secondary data has been collected from Districts Statistical Handbook, Primary Census Abstract, District Census Handbook, and Socio‐Economic and Caste Census. The principal component analysis technique has been used for ICT diffusion index calculation. ArcMap 10.1 has been used for Mapmaking to understand the spatial intensity of the ICT index. The study finds that West Bengal falls within the least zone (0.07–0.18) of ICT diffusion in India due to multi‐dimensional socio‐economic factors. Only 35 CD blocks out of 341 are located in the high ICT diffusion zone (0.49–0.79) in West Bengal, which is 6.87 percent area to the total area. The study concluded that the higher the ICT diffusion higher is the rural development in West Bengal. The study recommends that the government invest more money in ICT in rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uncovers some important stylised facts about the structural changes in the rural nonfarm (RNF) economy in Bangladesh for the period 2000–2016 and identifies some broad determinants. Our work uses household‐level, secondary sources such as Household Income and Expenditure Survey, Labour Force Survey and Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey. We find that the positive relationship between landownership and rural income has become weaker in recent years, indicating the increasing role of nonland inputs in generating rural income. The share of RNF income in total rural income has increased substantially over the years. The increase in nonfarm income is largely driven by the nonfarm wage income of the richer households, indicating adverse distributional consequences. There are also indications for specialisation in nonfarm activities—the share of income from the 'mixed' sources of farm and nonfarm has decreased, and the 'only nonfarm' source has increased. Households tend to move away from agriculture and specialise in RNF occupations as the education level increases. Our results offer important insights into rural development strategies and contribute to the broader questions of the development discourse on the structural changes in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital transformation has unveiled new prospects for increased performance and productivity in the agricultural sector to meet rising food security needs. Continuous industrialization and unexpected disruptions (e.g., workforce mobility restrictions due to the COVID‐19 pandemic) call for the adoption of agricultural robots. However, automated solutions could be associated with societal challenges in rural areas; unemployment growth has been perceived as a major threat that jeopardizes societal welfare, potentially hindering the implementation of digital technologies. In this context, human–robot synergistic systems could act as a promising socially viable alternative. Through systems thinking, this research investigates the complex interconnections and key feedback mechanisms of automation diffusion (conventional and human–robot interactive) under the socio‐economic perceptions (drivers and barriers) of agribusinesses and rural communities. Overall, this study contributes towards eliciting the mental models that underpin the transition from agricultural robots to human–robot collaboration by transforming automation‐related societal risks into opportunities for sustainable rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)