Rural return migration in the post COVID-19 China: Incentives and barriers

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted China's labor market, leading to a decline in employment standards and placing many migrant workers in a precarious working condition. This situation has rekindled public awareness of the “returning-home tide”. However, the motivations behind migrant workers returning home during the post-pandemic phase remain unclear. Drawing on the extended Theory of Planned Behavior, this study based on surveys of 349 migrant workers in Sichuan and Chongqing, aims to elucidate the key influencing factors and mechanisms driving migrant workers' motivation to return to their hometowns. Our results show that Behavioral attitude (BA), Subjective norms (SN), Perceived behavioral control (PBC), and Perceived support (PS) significantly and positively impact migrant workers' behavioral intention (BI) to return to their hometowns. Two prominent pathways, namely ‘COVID-19→BA→BI’ and ‘COVID-19→SN→BI’, emerge as crucial in determining the return migration intention of migrant workers. Additionally, Commercial Housing (CH) plays a significant and negative moderating role in the relationship between COVID-19 and Actual behaviour (AB). These results contribute to an improved understanding of the behavioral intentions of migrant workers to return home, offering important implications for enhancing the well-being of low-skilled labor in developing countries.