China’s rural human settlements: Qualitative evaluation, quantitative analysis and policy implications

Abstract

Building a beautiful and livable countryside is essential to farmers’ wellbeing, contributing to the development of New Socialist Countryside in China. Few of the existing studies have established a sound theoretical framework to evaluate rural human settlements from the perspective of farmers, who are the major beneficiaries of the rural human settlements. Therefore, this paper establishes a theoretical framework to evaluate both hard and soft rural human settlements qualitatively and quantitatively. Based on surveys from 6 provinces (cities) in central and eastern China, the theoretical framework is tested using Structural Equation Model (SEM). The empirical results show that the surveyed farmers are vaguely unsatisfied with their local rural human settlements, making improvement a must. Moreover, there is a significant correlation between rural sanitation, housing condition, rural infrastructure, farmers’ economic burden, social services and rural human settlements, with rural sanitation and social services ranking at the top among the hard and soft human settlement indexes, respectively. Thus, the government should prioritize rural sanitation and social services to improve hard and soft human settlements, respectively. The discussions in this paper could provide solid foundations for policy makers to effectively improve rural human settlements.