Future matters: Unpacking villagers’ willingness to withdraw from rural homesteads in China

Abstract

As a key to community remediation, villagers' withdrawal from homesteads has long been a core subject of academic inquiry and a major concern of governments in China. Drawing upon the multi-level framework, we examine villagers' willingness to withdraw from rural homesteads in Sunan and explore the influencing mechanisms. The results of binary logistic regression (BLR) models imply that future expectations of villagers matter for their willingness within the twofold context of urbanization and rural revitalization, and that the expectations vary across households and regions. Developed regions and wealthy households with access to opportunities and social security tend to have better expectations and higher odds of withdrawal; villagers in less-favored regions are also inclined to escape the current environment of living, but however bound to homesteads by the disadvantage in coping with future uncertainties. Furthermore, we argue that differences in villagers’ willingness well reveals the uneven pattern of homesteads transition towards multifunctionality and can to some extent reify or even amplify inequalities in villages and across regions.