Spatial heterogeneity in and distributional characteristics of rural ecological livability in China--The case of Fujian Province

Rural revitalization in China: Measurement indicators, regional differences and dynamic evolution

It is crucial to scientifically assess China's rural revitalization and grasp its evolution laws. This paper constructs an indicator system to measure the level of rural revitalization in China from 2011 to 2021 using the entropy weight method. Then, we explore the spatial and temporal divergence and dynamic evolutionary characteristics of rural revitalization using the Dagum Gini coefficient and Kernel density. We found that the level of rural revitalization in China is low but fluctuating and increasing. Regionally, eastern China scores higher than central, western and northeastern China. In terms of dimensions, ecological livability scores are higher than prosperous industry, effective governance, affluent living and civilized countryside in that order. The regional differences in the level of rural revitalization are mainly reflected between regions, especially between eastern and western China, but the gap between regions is narrowing year by year. And the results of the Kernel density show that the level of rural revitalization in China shows a slow and balanced growth, but the eastern China shows a polarization growth. These findings can provide a comprehensive and objective outline of the advantages and shortcomings of rural revitalization development in China, and provide a policy reference for the comprehensive and stable promotion of rural revitalization construction.

Disability, equity, and measurements of livability: A scoping review

BACKGROUND

Livability is a concept commonly featured in health research to help shape public policy decisions and improve local place settings. Although widely used, it is a contested concept known for its ambiguity and inconsistency of measurements. Other criticisms include the lack of equity perspectives and the underrepresentation of people with disabilities and inhabitants of non-metropolitan places.

OBJECTIVES

This review sought to identify the extent to which people with disabilities and non-metropolitan places are included in measurements of livability and to critically review and summarise i) livability definitions and uses, ii) livability places and populations, and iii) livability measurements.

METHODS

The scoping review followed Arksey and O'Malley's methodological framework and the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews. The data extraction used meta-aggregation techniques to evaluate findings. A standardised mixed methods appraisal tool was used, and a novel classification of measurements was created.

RESULTS

Seventy-seven articles were included, and 1955 measurements were extracted. The overarching findings were: i) livability is inconsistently defined and assessed by measuring the performance of related and independent domains, ii) the population sample or the studies' participants are often not disclosed, non-metropolitan settings are overlooked, and equity is not generally applied or operationalised in measurements, and iii) there is an extensive lack of measurements considering people with disabilities and diversity within disabilities.

CONCLUSIONS

The assumptions of homogeneity in study populations in livability measurement literature overlook inequities experienced by people with disabilities and inhabitants of non-metropolitan settings. This review suggests recommendations for future research to assess livability from perspectives inclusive of human diversity.

Has green finance improved China's ecological and livable environment?

Green finance can promote economic transformation and technological innovation and play a key role in solving the ecological environment and energy crisis. This paper constructs a comprehensive ecological livable environment evaluation system based on the provincial panel data in China from 2011 to 2019. At the same time, the panel mediation effect and spatial econometric model are used to test the impact of green finance on the ecological and livable environment. The main research conclusions include the following: (1) green finance has significantly improved China's ecological and livable environment; (2) green finance improves the ecological and livable environment by improving the level of technological innovation; (3) the impact of green finance on the ecological livable environment has regional heterogeneity, and green finance in the central provinces has a better effect on the improvement of the ecological livable environment; and (4) the ecological livable environment among Chinese provinces has a significant positive spatial correlation. Among them, green finance has significantly improved the local ecological livable environment but reduced the ecological livable environment of surrounding provinces. Based on the above conclusions, this paper suggests that the government should pay more attention to green finance and technological innovation and coordinate the development of the ecological livable environment among provinces. The research results provide empirical evidence for better developing green finance and improving the ecological livable environment and also provide certain theoretical guidance for China's coordinated regional development and high-quality economic development.

Data-driven evaluation framework for the effectiveness of rural vitalization in China: an empirical case study of Hubei Province

Rural vitalization (RV) has attracted more and more attention in China, especially since the Rural Vitalization Strategy (RVS) was proposed to restrict rural decline in 2017. The evaluation of RV is an effective means to objectively identify the characteristics and problems of rural development, so exploring scientific and rational evaluation methods is important for sustainable rural development. Therefore, this study builds a data-driven evaluation framework from a "bottom-up" perspective, and selects Hubei Province as the object to evaluate the effectiveness of RV. The evaluation index system is formed based on the concept and connotation of RV, which contains six dimensions, namely thriving businesses (TB), pleasant living environments (PLE), social etiquette and civility (SEC), effective governance (EG), living in prosperity (LP), and organization system (OS). The empirical results indicate that there is a low level of variation of the total scores but an obvious disparity in the dimensional scores in 13 prefecture-level and 83 county-level regions. At county-level, the regional development stage has an impact on the effectiveness of RV, and regions with a higher economy or endowed with better resources perform better. The results of spatial analysis further reveal that there is regional agglomeration as well as differences in various dimensions, and regions with characteristic industries or policy support perform better. Compared with the traditional evaluation method, differentiated evaluation objectives and diversified data are considered in the evaluation process of this study. The results and discussion shown in this study could provide empirical evidence for policymakers to effectively promote RV in the future.

The Rural Livability Evaluation and Its Governance Path Based on the Left-Behind Perspective: Evidence from the Oasis Area of the Hexi Corridor in China

The evaluation of rural livability for different groups of left-behind people and proposing classified governance paths are of great practical significance to solve the problem of sustainable development of left-behind villages. Taking Jinchang, China as an example, this paper aims to construct a rural livability evaluation index system based on identifying the types of left-behind villages, which combines the “individuality + commonality” of different left-behind subjects, analyzes the livability level of left-behind villages and proposes a classified governance path to help solve the problem of sustainable development of left-behind villages. The results show the following: (1) The types of left-behind villages are mainly left-behind children and left-behind elderly types, accounting for 68.75% of the total number of left-behind villages. (2) There are large differences in the livability of individual characteristics of the villages. The average livability for children is the largest, reaching 0.6608. The average livability for women is the smallest, being only 0.1418. The livability values for the elderly and children are mainly in the medium-value areas, while the livability for women is mainly in the low-value areas. (3) The overall livability level of the villages is low, mainly falling in the low-value areas. The evaluation units with values higher than the average accounted for 40.625% of the total. The level of meeting the demands of the left-behind population in villages is low. The overall levels of economic development, public services, infrastructure, and configuration need to be optimized and improved, and the living and production conditions need to be further improved. (4) According to “left-behind + livable”, we classified the villages into five types: optimizing and upgrading villages, improving short-board villages, balanced developing villages, upgrading potential villages, and comprehensive upgrading villages. In the future, it is necessary to carry out classified governance from various aspects, such as improving governance, making up for shortcomings, coordinating and balancing, and comprehensively improving quality to achieve the ultimate goal of sustainable rural development.