Multi-dimensional hollowing characteristics of traditional villages and its influence mechanism based on the micro-scale: A case study of Dongcun Village in Suzhou, China

Abstract

The hollowing of traditional villages not only causes the waste of land resources, loss of population, aging and weakening of rural population, and the decline of rural industries, but also threatens the protection of tangible cultural heritage and traditional folklore. Taking the case of Dongcun Village, a traditional village in Jinting town in Suzhou, this paper measures the degree of hollowing from three dimensions of land, population and industry, and uses GIS technology to analyze the rural hollowing characteristics. It builds regression models with the rural households as the study units and provides a micro-scale analysis of the formation mechanism of traditional village hollowing. The results are shown as follows. (1) The land hollowing rate of this traditional village is 20.19 % in Dongcun Village. Vacant and abandoned residential land is concentrated at the core of the village, while new houses increase on the periphery. Many families have more than one plot of housing land, accounting for 67.97 %. (2) The population hollowing of Dongcun Village is not only manifested in the large proportion of out-migrants (20.3 %), but also in the unbalanced structure of the resident population. The proportion of remaining labor has decreased to 42.31 % and is lower than the average level of rural China. (3) More than half of the households only had the elderly and weak farming laborers, and a few households even abandoned it. Industry hollowing was particularly severe in households along the town road, indicating that the periphery of the village was not solid and some deeper problems of population and industry hollowing occurred in there. (4) The hollowing of traditional villages is influenced by various factors including family economics, location and transportation, natural resource endowment, family demographic structure, housing situation, and land management. Among them, family economy is the main influence factor of rural hollowing, since non-agricultural employment transformation enhances the ability of farmers to build houses, contributing to land and industry hollowing. The location and transportation factor is the guiding force for the hollowing of land and industry. The relative lack of cultivated land resources and the low efficiency of farming are the root causes of population and industry hollowing. The family demographic structure provides the basic driving force for rural hollowing. The housing situation, especially the building year of houses, affects the demand for house renewal and becomes the direct driving force of land hollowing. The land management factor also contributes to hollowing.