Rural Land Research Articles

Understanding government support for rural development in Hubei Province, China

Quantifying the spatiotemporal characteristics of government support for rural development is crucial for accurately optimizing or formulating policies for rural development, but research identifying government support for rural development at the geospatial scale has not yet emerged. This paper used Hubei Province, China, as the study area and constructed indicators of government support for rural development based on the intensity of support, the spatial direction of support, and the spatial agglomeration of support based on the characteristics of legal rural construction land allocation. Panel data regression was used to quantify the direction of rural development that requires the allocation of rural construction land based on government support. The results showed that government support for rural development through legal rural construction land allocation has strong spatiotemporal characteristics: From 2009 to 2018, the intensity of support grew, the spatial direction of support was regular, and government support was increasingly manifested as local agglomeration. The orientations of government support through legal rural construction land allocation for rural development include farmers’ production, farmers’ livelihoods and social security. This research provides a reference for quantifying government support through legal rural construction land allocation for rural development and the direction of government support.

Residents’ attitudes toward land lease for rural tourism

Residents’ attitudes toward land lease are a crucial factor in the success of tourism development, especially in developing countries like China, where land lease has emerged as a significant means for developers to obtain rural land for tourism purposes. Nevertheless, the absence of longitudinal field research, which could offer more profound insights into residents’ attitudes compared to cross-sectional studies, contributes to the persistent “attitude-behavior gap” in sustainable tourism. Using a field research method and taking Longtan Village in China as a typical case, this study focuses on changes in residents’ attitudes toward land lease and the mechanism underlying these changes. The findings show that Longtan residents’ attitudes toward land lease for tourism development changed from “anxiety and collective objection” to “ambivalence and individual differences” and finally to “expectation and collective support”. Residents’ attitudes were determined by the transaction risk arising from the conflict between formal and informal institutions in the context of social transformation. The findings provide implications for tourism managers to achieve the sustainable development of tourist destinations in developing countries.

Association between Hometown Landholdings and Housing Quality of Rural Migrants in Urban Areas: Evidence from China

Urbanization progress in developing countries is reflected in the urban living conditions of their rural migrants. Housing quality, in particular, is linked to migrants’ social integration and development of human capital. In China, where urban housing is highly stratified by urban citizenship via the “hukou” or household registration system, improving housing quality is a top priority for the central government in its pursuit of human-centered urbanization. Despite some social and economic elements affecting migrants’ housing quality being documented, few studies have analyzed the determinants of rural migrants’ housing quality from the perspective of rural landholdings or possession of use rights of rural lands, which is endowed by the land system of China. Using large micro-data from the China Migrant Dynamic Survey (CMDS), this study investigates the association between hometown landholdings and rural migrants’ housing quality in their host cities. The empirical results suggest that possessing rural landholdings in their hometown is negatively correlated with rural migrants’ housing quality in their host cities, wherein rural migrants’ hukou transfer intention is found as an intermediary factor. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of the relationship across demographic characteristics and regions was investigated. In addition, short-term revenue derived from hometown landholdings is also verified to have a very limited positive effect on migrants’ housing quality. Land transfer policies customized for subgroups of rural migrants across sociological attributes and urban stratification are concluded finally.

Land Fragmentation and Heirs Property: Current Issues and Policy Responses

Land fragmentation continues to be a challenge throughout the world, the United States, and particularly in the rapidly growing Southeast, as well as every state with a metropolitan area that abuts rural lands. With a United States population expected to grow to more than 500 million by 2060, it will present exceptional challenges for planners and policy makers to preserve important agricultural lands for farms and forests to provide both food and fiber, as well as to provide a host of ecosystem services and enhance the quality of life for our growing population. These issues of fragmentation are extremely substantial for African American, other minority, and limited-income landowners in the U.S. South, who often lack wills and have lands that are broken up into small parcels, or have divided ownership rights in one parcel, when passed on to heirs. Existing efforts can be expanded to provide tools and incentives for the owners of hiers property and other working lands to preserve them, and state and municipal planners will need to promote development plans and practices thoughtfully and strategically in order to prevent the projected loss of nearly 18 million acres of working lands by the year 2040.

Horse populations are severely underestimated in a region at risk of Hendra virus spillover.

To identify the size and distribution of the horse population in the Northern Rivers Region of NSW, including changes from 2007 to 2021, to better understand populations at risk of Hendra virus transmission. Census data from the 2007 Equine Influenza (EI) outbreak were compared with data collected annually by New South Wales Local Land Services (LLS) (2011-2021), and with field observations via road line transects (2021). The horse populations reported to LLS in 2011 (3000 horses; 0.77 horses/km2) was 145% larger than that reported during the EI outbreak in 2007 (1225 horses; 0.32 horses/km2). This was inconsistent with the 6% increase in horses recorded from 2011 to 2020 within the longitudinal LLS dataset. Linear modelling suggested the true horse population of this region in 2007 was at least double that reported at the time. Distance sampling in 2021 estimated the region's population at 10,185 horses (3.89 per km2; 95% CI = 4854-21,372). Field sampling and modelling identified higher horse densities in rural cropland, with the percentage of conservation land, modified grazing, and rural residential land identified as the best predictors of horse densities. Data from the 2007 EI outbreak no longer correlates to the current horse population in size or distribution and was likely not a true representation at the time. Current LLS data also likely underestimates horse populations. Ongoing efforts to further quantify and map horse populations in Australia are important for estimating and managing the risk of equine zoonoses.

Evaluation of rural ecological resilience from the perspective of communities and farmers: a study on Laochehe ethnic minority village in China

The ecological problems of tourism villages in the context of globalization cannot be ignored. Rural tourism has destroyed the rural ecological environment, and it is of great significance to explore the ecological resilience of tourism villages to achieve sustainable development. This study introduces an analytical framework with which to assess the ecological resilience of rural tourism locales, focusing on micro-level perspectives involving communities and farmers. Ecosystem service values and a comprehensive index are utilized as proxies to characterize ecological resilience, and its evolutionary characteristics and mechanisms are investigated. The results are as follows. (1) From the community perspective, rural land use has changed significantly from the agricultural function to the tourism compound function. During this transition, the ecological resilience index has decreased by 2.05 × 106. (2) From the perspective of farmers, the rural ecological resilience index and various dimensional indices have altogether increased. Notably, the transformation capability index has increased by 30.34%, the interference capability index has increased by 21.78%, and the response capability index has increased by 14.72%. The ecological resilience indices for different livelihood types, from highest to lowest, are ranked as follows: tourism-oriented farmers (0.4412), tourism-participating farmers (0.4274), and migrant-oriented farmers (0.4066). (3) Socio-economic factors and farmers’ livelihoods lead to the imbalance of the rural social ecosystem. The adaptive transformation of tourism villages has facilitated the dynamic evolution of ecological resilience. This study contributes to the enrichment of ecological resilience research perspectives and may offer valuable insights for the sustainable development of tourism villages in similarly developing countries around the world.

Perencanaan Penerimaan Pajak Bumi dan Bangunan Perdesaan dan Perkotaan (PBB-P2) pada Badan Pendapatan Daerah Kota Padang Tahun 2021-2023

The objective of this research was to understand the process of planning the Land and Building Tax (PBB-P2) at the Padang City Revenue Agency. The study employed a qualitative descriptive method. Data collection techniques included interviews and documentation. The results of the study depicted that in setting revenue targets for the year 2021-2022, the Padang City Revenue Agency still relied on assumptions without conducting in-depth studies on the actual sources of revenue. In 2023, the Padang City Revenue Agency changed its planning approach by conducting comprehensive analyses of revenue potential based on revenue trends and various alternative efforts to increase revenue. The achievement of the target could be considered a positive accomplishment; however, the fact that the realization was still far below the actual potential indicated that there was still room for improvement in planning.
 Keywords: Revenue Planning; Rural and Urban Land and Building Tax (PBB-P2); Regional Revenue Agency of Padang City

Quantitative analysis of big data for land resource classification and zoning at the township level in Northern Shaanxi

To analyze and evaluate the conditions and distribution characteristics of rural land resources in northern Shaanxi. The experiment extracts two terrain feature values, namely slope and undulation, which are highly correlated with land resources. Then, the extraction results of all 302-township level administrative regions in northern Shaanxi are processed, and the scoring results of all township level units are sorted. Based on this, optimization and adjustment are made to form a classification result. The experimental results show that land resources in primary townships are most scarce, mainly distributed in the central and western regions of northern Shaanxi, with 53 in Yan'an and 7 in Yulin; Land resources in secondary townships are relatively scarce, mainly distributed along the Yellow River in the central and southern parts of northern Shaanxi, with 40 in Yan'an and 53 in Yulin; The land resources of third level townships are relatively abundant, generally distributed along the Great Wall, and belong to the transitional zone between windblown sand and grassland areas and hilly and gully areas. Except for one third level township located in Yan'an, all 22 other townships are located in Yulin; The fourth level townships have abundant land resources and are located in the loess plateau landform area in the southern part of northern Shaanxi. They belong to Yan'an Luochuan and three surrounding counties, totaling 17 townships; The terrain of the fifth and sixth level townships is flat, and the land resources are the most abundant. They belong to the sandy and grassy terrain north of the Great Wall in northern Shaanxi. A total of 56 townships are located in 7 county-level administrative regions of Yulin City. The experimental results lay the foundation for the research on optimizing the spatial pattern of rural life in northern Shaanxi, and can also provide support for classified guidance and precise policy implementation for rural revitalization, agricultural industry policy formulation, human settlement environment construction, and ecological environment protection.

Feasibility of Urban–Rural Temperature Difference Method in Surface Urban Heat Island Analysis under Non-Uniform Rural Landcover: A Case Study in 34 Major Urban Agglomerations in China

The urban–rural temperature difference is widely used in measuring surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII), where the accurate determination of rural background is crucial. However, traditionally, the entire permeable rural surface has been selected to represent the background temperature, leaving uncertainty about the impact of non-uniform rural surfaces with multiple land covers on the accuracy of SUHII quantification. In this study, we proposed two quantifications of SUHII derived from the primary (SUHII1) and secondary (SUHII2) land types, respectively, which successively occupy over 40–50% of whole rural regions. The spatial integration and temporal variation of SUHII1 and SUHII2 were compared with the result from whole rural regions (SUHII) within 34 urban agglomerations (UAs) in China. The results showed that the SUHII1 and SUHII2 differed slightly with SUHII, and the correlation coefficients of SUHII and SUHII1/SUHII2 are generally above 0.9 in most (32) UAs. Regarding the long-term SUHII between 2003 and 2019, the three methods demonstrated similar seasonal patterns, although SUHII1 (or SUHII2) tended to overestimate or underestimate compared to SUHII. As for the multi-year integration at the regional scale, the day–night cycle and monthly variations of SUHII1 and SUHII were found to be identical for each geographical division separately, indicating that the spatiotemporal pattern revealed by SUHII is minimally affected by the diversity of rural landcover types. The findings confirmed the viability of the urban–rural LST difference method for measuring long-term regional SUHII patterns under non-uniform rural land cover types.

Rural Industrialization's Impact on Rural Land System Transformations: A Study of China's East Coast

Rural Industrialization's Impact on Rural Land System Transformations: A Study of China's East Coast

The Impact of Land Property Right on China’s Rural-Urban Migration

After the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), private ownership of land in rural areas was abolished, and land was collectively owned. However, the Chinese government issued several policies to protect the rights and interests of farmers. The most representative of these are the Household Responsibility System (HRS) and the Rural Land Contracting Law (RLCL). In this paper, we study the impact of land management systems on population migration under market mechanisms (ability to rent land) and government mechanisms (land expropriation). And we used the Probit model to conduct regression analysis to verify the impact of land management systems on population migration and used robustness tests to ensure the stability and validity of the data. The results show that allowing land to be rented out has a positive effect on population migration, while land acquisition by the government has a negative effect on population migration. It proves that the Three Rights Division (TRD) system proposed and implemented by Chairman Xi Jinping, which forms ownership, contracting, and management rights to protect the rights of agricultural business entities, helps reduce urban-rural income inequality, helps upgrade the industrial structure of urban industries, and maintains economic expansion and increases China's long-term development potential.

Tourism Development and Rural Land Transfer-Out: Evidence from China Family Panel Studies

For a long time, the decline in agricultural comparative returns and the urban–rural development gap in China have prompted the outflow of rural labor. Land transfer policies, which allow farmers to retain their land contracting rights while transferring their management rights, were instituted to mitigate the impact of labor outflow on land use and agricultural production. In recent years, tourism has contributed to the diversification of the rural economy and has had an essential impact on the urban–rural allocation of elements such as labor. In this paper, we adopt a probit model to investigate the impact of tourism development on rural land transfer-out by using data from the China Family Panel Studies. The results show that the marginal effect of tourism development is significantly negative, indicating that the probability of rural land transfer-out was significantly reduced with tourism development. The results are still valid after a series of robustness tests. A mechanism analysis indicates that tourism development inhibits land transfer by enhancing local vitality, such as increasing the local employment of rural labor and promoting participation in agricultural production. Moreover, from the perspective of rural welfare and asset prices, further research finds that tourism development contributes to poverty alleviation and increases land value. These results suggest that tourism development inhibits land transfer while promoting rural sustainable development, helping to understand the impact of tourism on rural land use and household asset allocation from a more comprehensive perspective.

Analisis pelaksanaan pemungutan Pajak Bumi Dan Bangunan Perdesaan dan Perkotaan (PBB-P2) berdasarkan Peraturan Bupati No 18 Tahun 2014 di Kecamatan Pasan Kabupaten Minahasa Tenggara

Rural and Urban Sector Land and Building Tax (PBB-P2) is a tax on land and/or buildings except for areas used for plantations, forestry and mining business activities. PBB-P2 collection covers the entirSe process of registering, collecting data and assessing tax objects as well as determining, receiving payments, collecting and reporting receipts. This research aims to find out how the Land and Building Tax Collection (PBB-P2) is implemented based on Regent Regulation No. 18 of 2014 in Pasan District, Southeast Minahasa Regency. The method used in this research is a qualitative descriptive analysis method, where observations and interviews are carried out. Based on the results of existing research, it can be seen that in Pasan District, Land and Building Tax Collection (PBB-P2) has been implemented in accordance with applicable regulations, namely Regent's Regulation No. 18 of 2014 starting from registration, data collection, assessment, determination, payment, billing and recording of receipt.

Will farmland renting out boost rural households’ income? Evidence from China’s rural areas

ABSTRACT This paper estimates the effect of renting out farmland on rural households’ income through a difference-in-differences (DID) approach, using data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). Our findings support the income growth effect of farmland renting out, which is confirmed by a series of robustness tests. Additionally, the mechanism tests indicate that both the farmland rental income proportion in the total income and the rural household members’ probability of non-farm work significantly increase after farmers rent out their farmland. Our study helps to explore the market-based allocation of farmland and provides Chinese evidence and reference for the reform of rural land systems in emerging economies.

Study on the impact of hometown resource endowment on farmers’ rural-urban migration decisions against the background of “dual carbon”

This study investigates the impact of hometown resource endowment on farmers’ rural-urban migration decisions within the context of “Dual Carbon” policies. It aims to understand the factors influencing migration decision-making amidst the dynamics of urban and rural land occupation, particularly focusing on the role of hometown resource endowments led by homesteads. Using data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS), this study analyzes the influence of hometown resource endowment, primarily residential land, on farmers’ migration decisions. Ownership of homesteads and contracted land significantly affects farmers’ settlement in cities, while the dividend effect from village collectives is negligible. Additionally, the administrative level of the hometown serves as a significant factor in migration decision-making, particularly in family migration. Homestead and contracted land ownership negatively impacts both household and individual migration decisions. Specifically, owning homesteads exerts a greater influence on whole family migration decisions, reducing the probability of settling in cities by 21.1%. Regional comparative analysis reveals varying effects of owning homesteads and contracted land. While it positively influences household migration to cities in the eastern region, it inhibits migration in the central and western regions. The findings highlight the complex interplay between hometown resource endowment, land use patterns, and rural-urban migration decisions. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for designing effective policies to address migration challenges in the context of environmental and socioeconomic transitions.

Paths and Mechanisms of Rural Transformation Promoted by Rural Collectively Owned Commercial Construction Land Marketization in China

Rural collectively owned commercial construction land marketization (RCCCLM), a land policy that is still being piloted despite being allowed by law, has been regarded as an indispensable policy tool that can meet the land demand for rural development. This study aims to analyze the typical modes and key paths of RCCCLM for rural transformation theoretically and practically. We developed an innovative theoretical framework of “Situation-Structure-Implementation-Outcome” to illustrate the relationship between RCCCLM and rural transformation. By tracing the process of the impact of RCCCLM on rural transformation in typical areas, this study fills the gap in existing research that has not yet explored the theoretical mechanisms between RCCCLM and rural transformation. The results show that a combination of such factors as geographical location and rural land use status brings about three major ways of RCCCLM, namely, local marketization, adjustive marketization and consolidation-based marketization, to promote rural transformation. The influencing mechanism of RCCCLM on rural transformation mainly concerns rights granting, rural land use structure reshaping, the transformation of farmers’ livelihood and improvement in rural governance capacity. Rural transformation follows a basic rule and phased characteristics of evolving from single function to multiple functions, and RCCCLM displays a differentiated driving effect on the evolution of rural functions in different stages of rural development. These findings will provide new insights into rural land use and rural transformation in China and other developing countries and help solve the bottlenecks in rural transformation.

A New High-Resolution Rural Built-Up Land Extraction Method Based on Artificial Surface Index with Short-Wave Infrared Downscaling

The complexity of surface characteristics in rural areas poses challenges for accurate extraction of built-up areas from remote sensing images. The Artificial Surface Index (ASI) emerged as a novel and accurate built-up land index. However, the absence of short-wave infrared (SWIR) bands in most high-resolution (HR) images restricts the application of index-based methods in rural built-up land extraction. This paper presents a rapid extraction method for high-resolution built-up land in rural areas based on ASI. Through the downscaling techniques of random forest (RF) regression, high-resolution SWIR bands were generated. They were then combined with visible and near-infrared (VNIR) bands to compute ASI on GaoFen-2 (GF-2) images (called ASIGF). Furthermore, a red roof index (RRI) was designed to reduce the probability of misclassifying built-up land with bare soil. The results demonstrated that SWIR downscaling effectively compensates for multispectral information absence in HR imagery and expands the applicability of index-based methods to HR remote sensing data. Compared with five other indices (UI, BFLEI, NDBI, BCI, and PISI), the combination of ASI and RRI achieved the optimal performance in built-up land enhancement and bare land suppression, particularly showcasing superior performance in rural built-up land extraction.

Domestic and International Site Remediation Progress

The regulation of urban construction land can effectively solve the problems of inefficient use of urban land, idle land, urban stock land. This paper systematically combs the practice and experience of construction land regulation in several countries at home and abroad, which provides reference for the development of construction land regulation projects in China. Under the new situation, we should adapt to the current situation that the objects, objectives and models of land reclamation are more diversified, implement the strategy of land connotation excavation and reclamation and redevelopment. The urban and rural land use structure and industrial layout must be further optimized to promote the economic and intensive use of land, and promote urban renewal and industrial transformation and upgrading.

Effect of COVID-19 Lockdown on Urban Heat Island Dynamics in Prague, Czechia

Urban heat islands (UHI) are a well-known phenomenon adversely affecting human health and urban environments. The worldwide COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 provided a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of decreased emission of air pollution and anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) on UHI. Although studies have suggested that reduced AHF during lockdown decreased atmospheric UHI (AUHI) and surface UHI (SUHI), these results contain inherent uncertainties due to unaccounted weather variability and urban-rural dynamics. Our study comprehensively analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on AUHI and SUHI in Prague, Czechia. By selecting days with similar weather conditions, we examined changes in mean SUHI using MODIS satellite images and in AUHI based on air temperature from Prague weather stations for the Lockdown period during March–April 2020 versus a Reference period from March–April 2017–2019. Our results show that, in comparison to the Reference period, the Lockdown period was associated with a 15% (0.1 °C) reduction of SUHI in urbanized areas of Prague and a 0.7 °C decline in AUHI in the city center. Additionally, the observed decreases in satellite-based aerosol optical depth and nitrogen dioxide by 12% and 29%, respectively, support our hypothesis that the weakened UHI effects were linked to reduction in anthropogenic activities during the lockdown. Revealing the largest decrease of mean SUHI magnitude around the periphery of Prague, which has predominantly rural land cover, our study emphasizes the need to consider the effects of urban-rural dynamics when attributing changes in SUHI to AHF. Our findings provide additional insights into the role of reduced anthropogenic activities in UHI dynamics during the COVID-19 lockdown and offer policymakers a comprehensive understanding of how the complex interaction between urban and rural microclimate dynamics influences the SUHI phenomenon.

A generational perspective on rural livelihood change

AbstractAs rural places and people are increasingly intertwined between cities, markets and mobility, broader perspectives are needed to examine the multiple changes occurring between rural and urban spaces, and between families and generations. This article discusses how a generational perspective can study ‘more‐than‐rural’ change in a contemporaneous manner. Drawing on field examples from a village on Flores Island, Indonesia, I show how intergenerational views, gathered through household surveys and in‐depth interviews, gave further depth to younger generations' changing relationships to land. Why, despite greater numbers of young people leaving the village for greater work and study opportunities elsewhere, were many parents sure their children would return one day? Using intergenerational and life‐course views to answer this question revealed how many villagers encountered livelihood limitations elsewhere. Furthermore, I show how generational data give fuller explanations to household dynamics, such as how age and gender play a role in the pursuit of migration between family members, and how rural land and households are managed over time and space. I conclude by discussing the strengths and challenges of building a generational perspective to study ‘more‐than‐rural’ livelihood change.