How urban–rural interactions promote sustainable rural development: Evidence from the Chang–Zhu–Tan urban agglomeration, China

Abstract

Promoting positive urban–rural interactions is a key strategy for addressing rural decline and advancing regional sustainable development. This study examines the impacts of urban–rural interactions on rural development and explores their mechanisms for advancing sustainability within urban agglomeration areas. Using the Chang–Zhu–Tan (CZT) urban agglomeration as a case study, with an indicator system to measure urban–rural interactions and rural sustainable development, we analyze the mediating effects of resource flows in the process of urban–rural interactions driving rural sustainability through a mediation model. The results show that spatial connectivity, industrial convergence, and social integration between urban and rural areas positively contribute to the economic and social sustainability of rural areas. However, urban–rural spatial connectivity and social integration may negatively impact on rural environment. In this process, capital, technology, and labor play significant mediating roles, whereas the influence of land is less pronounced. Based on these findings, we propose several recommendations for strategically leveraging the benefits of urban–rural interactions across various social-ecological contexts while mitigating their drawbacks.

Keywords

Urban–rural interaction / Rural sustainability / Mediation effect / Chang–Zhu–Tan (CZT) urban agglomeration

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Yanhua He: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Yi Liu: Writing – original draft, Software, Data curation. Xuening Fang: Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 42071225 and 42471243), the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (Grant No. 2020JJ4056), the Postgraduate Scientific Research Innovation Project of Hunan Province (Grant No. QL20230126).

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