Evaluation and determinants of satisfaction with rural livability in China's less-developed eastern areas: A case study of Xianju County in Zhejiang Province

摘要

In addition to now being the new objective of the governance of rural human settlements, ecological livability is also regarded as the key to the rural revitalization strategy in the new era. However, when compared with the previous studies which focused on urban livability, in terms of perspectives and methods, the studies regarding rural livability are expected to further penetrate into the most important issues. Therefore, based on field questionnaire survey results from twelve towns in a less-developed eastern county in China, this study's goals were to evaluate the characteristics of the satisfaction levels of rural livability, as well as examine the intensity effects of the related determinants, using a structural equation model (SEM). The empirical results of this study indicated that the respondents had an above-average satisfaction with rural livability of 3.559. In regard to the various dimensions of rural livability, the respondents were found to be relatively satisfied with the natural environmental conditions (4.123) and the human social amenities (3.821). However, the respondents were observed to be slightly dissatisfied with the sanitation status (3.404) and public service levels (3.456). The results of this study's SEM further revealed that there was a significant correlation between all six examined dimensions and the overall satisfaction with rural livability, with public service levels and sanitation status ranking as the top two among all of the dimensions. In contrast, it was observed that the natural environment conditions and human social amenities appeared to have less effect on the overall satisfaction of the respondents. Moreover, different individual socioeconomic attributes were found to also have distinct effects on the overall satisfaction level. The results and discussions presented in this study could potentially provide solid foundations for policy makers to effectively promote the construction of beautiful and livable rural environments in the future.