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Journal of Geographical Sciences >

2022 , Vol. 32 >Issue 7: 1297 - 1320

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-022-1998-1

Special Issue: Urban and Rural Governance Toward Sustainable Development Goals

Structure and governance model of rural social space quality: A case study of Longxi County in the Loess Hilly Area of China

  • WU Shanshan , 1 ,
  • MA Libang , 1, 2, 3, * ,
  • TAO Tianmin 1 ,
  • DOU Haojian 1
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  • 1. College of Geography and Environmental Science, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China
  • 2. Key Laboratory of Resource Environment and Sustainable Development of Oasis, Gansu Province, Lanzhou 730070, China
  • 3. Northwest Institute of Urban-Rural Development and Collaborative Governance, Lanzhou 730070, China
*Ma Libang (1984-), Professor, specialized in rural settlement and its spatial reconstruction. E-mail:

Wu Shanshan (1997-), PhD Candidate, specialized in rural settlements and social space. E-mail:

Received date: 2021-10-15

  Accepted date: 2022-02-15

  Online published: 2022-09-25

Supported by

National Natural Science Foundation of China(41961033)

Natural Science Foundation of Gansu Province(20JR5RA519)

The Graduate Research Funding Project of Northwest Normal University in 2021(2021KYZZ01039)

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Abstract

The rural social space quality is an important indicator to measure the living standard and thinking ideas and so forth of rural residents in a certain region. In this paper, 213 administrative villages in Longxi County of the Loess Hilly Area, China are taken as evaluation units to construct the evaluation model of the rural social space quality. This paper deeply analyzed the variation patterns and their formation mechanism of the rural social space quality at a village scale, and proposed a governance model based on the rural social space quality. The results show that: (1) the social space quality levels of individual administrative villages show a gradually decreasing trend from the township seats to outward. The eastern part of Longxi County has a relatively high education level and living standard, and the western part has a relatively high population stability level and income level. (2) The rural social space quality is mainly in a ring structure, supplemented by the interlaced structure. The core area is the towns and their surrounding areas, while the transition area, marginal area, and other areas are expanded around the core area. (3) Social forces and spatial effects jointly shape the variation of the rural social space quality. Social organizations provide a driving force for the allocation of elements, and interweaving with the spatial effects lead to the differences in the social space quality. (4) The governance models of the rural social space quality are constructed based on the principles of retaining the rural “people”, optimizing the rural “land”, and developing the rural “industry”, so as to improve the rural centripetal force, core force, inner thrust, and source power.

Key words： rural social space quality; spatial structure; formation mechanism; governance model; Longxi County in the Loess Hilly Area of China

Cite this article

WU Shanshan , MA Libang , TAO Tianmin , DOU Haojian . Structure and governance model of rural social space quality: A case study of Longxi County in the Loess Hilly Area of China[J]. Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2022 , 32(7) : 1297 -1320 . DOI: 10.1007/s11442-022-1998-1

1 Introduction

With the transformation of human society from agricultural economy society to industrial economy society and knowledge economy society, the development of rural areas is constantly challenged by changes in the external development environment. The problems of limited rural development space, unclear space ownership, inefficient spatial organization, and low spatial quality are becoming more and more serious. Effectively solving the problems faced by rural areas from a spatial perspective and establishing a theoretical connotation and analytical framework are topics that geographers need to pay close attention (Ge et al., 2020). The five aspects of rural revitalization are organically connected with the rural social space, providing a substantial space carrier for the realization of rural revitalization (Qu et al., 2021). The main actors involved in the evolution of rural social space include the government, rural elites, external business capital and ordinary farmers, etc. This leads to spatial differences in social relations and social elements (Yang and Lin, 2021). Realizing the rational allocation of spatial elements and high-efficiency and high-quality development is of great significance to rural revitalization (Guo and Liu, 2021).
Rural researches based on a spatial perspective have been emerging since 1980s. The initial researches were carried out under the background of remarkable changes in rural economic and social development, outflow of surplus labor force and the increase in gross agricultural production and economic income. Then, with the changes of rural social background, the research perspective has also turned to the space of production, living, and ecology (“production-living-ecological” space). The production space is faced with many pressures and crises, such as serious non-agricultural and concurrent employment population, extensive utilization of land resources, mismatched demand of production subjects, contradictions in the allocation of production space and environmental pollution (Wang et al., 2019). The living space is manifested by the mixed living of the residence, the diversification of consumption space, the openness of communication space, and the vitalization of the public and entertainment space (Gao et al., 2020). The ecological space has problems such as weak resilience, poor protection, insufficient compensation, and unscientific construction (Zhang et al., 2021). The social space and the “production-living-ecological” space complement each other. As the main body of the social space, people show significant variation and associativity in their daily social life engaged within a certain region (Ai and Ma, 2004).
In the study of rural social space, scholars applied the theory of spatial production and capital circulation, used the participatory rural evaluation method to obtain the survey data, and combined with factor ecological analysis, systematic cluster analysis, GIS spatial analysis, and social network analysis (Lu and Yu, 2020; Yang et al., 2020). They finally found that the village production mode has been adjusted, and the land-use pattern has been reconstructed under the action of capital, governments and social organizations. This in turn affects the living space, composition of residents, occupation, and income structure, consumption behavior and social connection structure, etc. This differentiates the social space and forms the “holocentric”, “bicentric” and “plural” social spatial structure characteristics (Wang et al., 2014; Xi et al., 2014; Chen and Zhang, 2015; Syarifudin and Fathoni, 2020; Wu et al., 2020). The authorities (governments, social organizations, etc.) act on the rural residential, public space, production space and consumption space through the “space” intermediary transmission system to reconstruct the social space (Yao and Xie, 2016; Ye et al., 2020). The research on rural quality mainly focuses on the quality of life and the quality of human settlements. In terms of research on the quality of life, scholars are more inclined to compare the differences in community satisfaction and difficulty between urban and rural residents (Bernard, 2018). They broke the traditional research paradigm to analyze the relationship among the main components (economic situation, living conditions, and psychological comfort) of the quality of life (Wojewódzka-Wiewiórska et al., 2020), and paid more and more attentions to vulnerable groups such as the elderly and teenagers, as well as social problems such as poverty and social conflicts (Wilmowska-Pietruszyńska et al., 2018). In China, scholars emphasized the spatial variation of the quality of life. They argued that the quality of life in urban and rural areas is closely related, and rural life is affected by the city (Ma et al., 2020). Based on the theory of rural human settlements, scholars have constructed a quantitative analysis framework for human settlements based on the needs of residents to describe the spatial pattern of rural human settlements in China (Hu and Wang, 2020; Shi et al., 2022). The researches on space quality are mostly concentrated in town areas, and the research contents are concentrated in the ecological space, public space and living space, etc. Cheng and Wang (2003) first started the research on living space quality, and established an index system including socio-economy, public security, education, climate, transportation, etc. for empirical research based on the existing research results of other scholars for reference. In recent years, the related researches mostly focus on the aspects such as innovating data sources and paying attention to special people (Putra et al., 2021), etc. With the continuous improvement of residents’ requirements for the quality of life, the adaptability of public space gradually decreased. Therefore, it is important to improve the space quality through space planning and management.
In the current environment, the utilization of rural space presents the characteristics of discontinuity, diversity of function, comprehensiveness of value and complication of relationship. To implement the comprehensive treatment of both “top-down” and “bottom-up”, it is necessary to clarify the space demand for “people” development, “land” optimization, “industry” revitalization and “right” reorganization in rural areas (Ge et al., 2020). Generally speaking, the research on rural social space has a certain foundation, but the concept and connotation of the quality of rural social space have not been clearly defined. Existing studies mostly selected a single village, and there is a lack of large and medium-scale social space research with villages as a unit, followed the “element-structure-impact”, focusing on the description of the phenomenon and the analysis of factors. However, there is a lack of in-depth analysis of theories and mechanisms. There are few studies on the quality evaluation of the rural social space. It is an urgent to enrich the theoretical connotation of social space and internal mechanism analysis. Based on the data of land survey in 2020, this paper took 213 administrative villages in Longzhong Loess Hilly Area of China as evaluation units. On the basis of constructing the index system measuring the rural social space quality, we calculated the scores of each subsystem and comprehensive social space quality, delineated the spatial variation patterns of quality, identified the type areas of rural social space quality by using the systematic cluster analysis method, and discriminated the structure of the social space quality in Longxi County. Finally, this paper discussed the formation mechanism of the social space quality, and provided suggestions for the governance of the rural social space quality. This study can improve the quality of rural social space and provide a reference for rural revitalization and effective rural governance.

2 Analysis of the concept connotation of the rural social space quality

For the rural social space, Ai found that the rural social space is the regional variation pattern of rural daily social life reflected by the social differentiation and isolation of rural residents. Based on the spatial variation of residential and the premise, study should take community as the basic unit (Ai and Ma, 2004). The researches on rural quality basically took the countryside as a whole, and investigate the rural quality of life and human settlements from a macro-scale. The rural regional quality of life has significant spatial agglomeration and differences (Fang et al., 2020). Human factors have a significant impact on quality of life (Dou et al., 2020). The native culture should still be considered in the improvement of human settlements (Liu et al., 2022). The term “rural social space quality” is put forward under the background of research on the rural social space and rural quality. The “quality” contains a description of the superior and inferior degree of things, products or working. In this paper, the rural social space quality is the variation of social elements in rural physical space because of the differences in rural development history, structure and function, etc. in a certain period and at specific regional conditions. This in turn leads to the differentiation or quality differences in the economic types, infrastructure, and public service levels, the quality of life and ideology of villagers, etc. (Figure 1). The specific connotation is as follows: under the different natural and social historical backgrounds in the countryside, there are differences in the level of rural infrastructure construction and economic development, the living standards and ideological concepts of the residents, and the relevant government measures and policies. This leads to the heterogeneity of its development background conditions. Social factors and capital investment are biased towards villages with superior geographical conditions, development potential and development space. This makes the overall quality of the villages uneven. Coupled with the differences in the main attributes of the villagers, the development opportunities in the villages are further differentiated. Therefore, there are differences in the quantity and quality of social factors because of the preferences of the government, the market, and capital. In addition, the cultural environment, market environment and social environment of the countryside are all differentiated under the influence of spatial effects. This affects the quality of rural social space.
Figure 1 Conceptual framework of the rural social space quality
(1) Regionalism. There are differences in the natural environment and social environment in different regions, resulting in the remarkable regionalism of rural space background. The natural geographic elements such as terrain and landform, river hydrology, meteorological climate, etc. profoundly affect the primary foundation and development potential of villages, and limit (or encourage) the allocation of social elements. Social factors such as development history, location conditions, cultural traditions, etc. affect the development goals and characteristics of villages.
(2) Sociality. Social space quality reflects the quality of social elements in a certain region, and its sociality is determined by the elements. Social elements that meet the development requirements of different social and historical periods are created by human beings in practical activities. Under the influence of complex and diverse organizations, systems and uncontrollable factors, they can act on the space and endow the space with sociality.
(3) Comprehensiveness. The comprehensiveness of the social space quality mainly depends on the diversity and integrity of geographical things. The rural regional system is a complex system that needs comprehensive consideration of population, economy, society, culture and other factors, giving full play to the characteristics of individual elements, paying attention to the integrity among individual elements, and interacting with each other to make the rural society perfect.

3 Study area

Longxi County is located in 104°18′-104°54′E and 34°50′-35°23′N, between the Northwest Loess Plateau edge and the hilly land of Qinling Mountains. The terrain and landform are complex, and the topography is high in northwest and low in the southeast. The county has a total area of 2408 km2, governing 12 towns, 5 townships, and 215 administrative villages (Figure 2). In 2020, the permanent residents of the county were 427,373, of which 208,241 were rural residents. The Gross Regional Product was 7.688 billion yuan, increasing 4% year-on-year. The per capita disposable income of rural residents was 9781 yuan, increasing 7.5% year-on-year. The participation rates of basic pension insurance and medical insurance for urban and rural residents reached 99% and 95%, respectively. There were 19 township hospitals and community health service centers, and 209 village clinics. There were 86,214 students in schools, and the illiteracy rate was 5.54%. The Longhai Railway and Lianhuo Highway G30 run from north to south, passing through Mahe Town, Tong’anyi Town, Yuntian Town, Gongchang Town, and Wenfeng Town in turn. The National Highway 316 passes through Wenfeng Town, Gongchang Town, and Shouyang Town. The Provincial Highway 209 mainly passes through Fuxing Town and Caizi Town. Longxi County has significant advantages in transportation location.
Figure 2 Location of Longxi County, Gansu Province, China

4 Research methods and data sources

4.1 Index system of the rural social space quality

4.1.1 Construction of the index system

The rural social space is a complex system composed of multi-attribute and multi-level subsystems. With reference to relevant research results (Wang et al., 2017), this paper took administrative villages as evaluation units, combined the characteristics of multi-dimensional comprehensiveness of the rural social space quality, pertinence of research objects, availability of data, and the principles of comprehensiveness, purposiveness, scientificity, and operability of index selection, and selected 17 indexes to evaluate the rural social space quality from four aspects such as population stability level, education level, living standard, and income level (Table 1).
Table 1 Comprehensive evaluation index system of the rural social space quality
Evaluation subsystem Subsystem weight Representative evaluation index Index weight Action direction
Population stability level
(Q1)		 0.2369 Proportion of migrant workers, X1 (%) 0.1328 -
Proportion of migrant workers who have worked for more than one year, X2 (%) 0.1275 -
Aging degree, X3 (%) 0.0533 -
Proportion of self-built houses used for operation, X4 (%) 0.5864 +
Proportion of left-behind children, women and the elderly, X5 (%) 0.1000 -
Education level
(Q2)		 0.2217 Proportion of illiterates, X6 (%) 0.1136 -
Proportion of people with high school education and below, X7 (%) 0.3097 -
Proportion of people with junior college education and above, X8 (%) 0.5767 +
Living standard
(Q3)		 0.3765 Road hardening degree, X9 (%) 0.0948 +
Number of express outlets per 100 people, X10 (Quantity/100 persons) 0.1874 +
Proportion of broadband coverage households, X11 (%) 0.0905 +
Number of garbage collection facilities per 100 people, X12 (Quantity/
100 persons)		 0.2434 +
Land area of public service facilities (Science, education, culture and health, square and commercial service facilities) per 100 people, X13
(HA/100 persons)		 0.3839 +
Income
level
(Q4)		 0.1649 Per capita net income, X14 (10,000 yuan/year) 0.1734 +
Proportion of average household agricultural income, X15 (%) 0.2101 +
Proportion of average household income from migrant workers, X16 (%) 0.1724 +
Proportion of average household business income, X17 (%) 0.4441 +

4.1.2 Determination of index weight

To evaluate the rural social space quality at a village scale in Longxi County, it is necessary to normalize the initial data to eliminate the influence of different index dimensions and numerical values on the results. When the contribution of the index value to the rural social space quality is positive, the positive index formula (1) is adopted for normalization. When the contribution of the index value to the rural social space quality is negative, the negative index formula (2) is adopted for normalization. The formulas are:
positive indexes: ${{Z}_{i}}=({{X}_{i}}-min{{X}_{i}})/(max{{X}_{i}}-min{{X}_{i}})$
negative indexes: ${{Z}_{i}}=(max{{X}_{i}}-{{X}_{i}})/(max{{X}_{i}}-min{{X}_{i}})$
where Xi and Zi are the original value and normalized value of the ith index of each administrative village in Longxi County in 2020, respectively. maxXi and minXi are the maximum value and minimum value of the ith index, respectively.
Furthermore, to minimize the influence of subjective factors on the evaluation results in the process of weight determination, this paper adopted the coefficient of variation method of objective assignment to determine the index weight.
${{\delta }_{i}}=\frac{{{D}_{i}}}{\overline{{{Z}_{i}}}}$
${{W}_{i}}=\frac{{{\delta }_{i}}}{\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{n}{{{\delta }_{i}}}}$
where δi, Di, $\overline{{{Z}_{i}}}$and Wi are the coefficient of variation, mean square error, mean, and weight values of the ith subsystem and the ith index, respectively.

4.2 Evaluation method of the rural social space quality

The weighted summation method was used to calculate the scores of population stability level, education level, living standard and income level subsystems, respectively. The rural social space quality index was further calculated.
${{Q}_{j}}=\sum\nolimits_{j=1}^{n}{{{W}_{i}}}\times {{Z}_{i}}$
$RSSQ=\sum\nolimits_{j=1}^{4}{{{W}_{j}}\times {{Q}_{j}}}$
where RSSQ (Rural Social Space Quality) is the rural social space quality index; Qj is the index value of the jth subsystem; Zi is the normalized value of each evaluation index of the rural social space quality index; Wi is the weight of the evaluation index i of the rural social space quality index, and n is the total number of indexes. Wj is the weight of the jth subsystem of the rural social space quality index. The greater the value of rural social space quality index RSSQ is, the better the rural social space quality index is, and vice versa.

4.3 Method for identifying the rural social space quality structure

The systematic cluster analysis method is an important method to quantitatively analyze the classification of geographical objects and geographical regions division. At present, the systematic cluster analysis method has been widely used in the division of urbanization quality areas, urban development space district, rural settlement region type, etc., providing an important theoretical reference for the classification of rural social spatial quality. Therefore, this paper introduced the systematic cluster analysis method into the classification of rural social space quality types to identify the structure of the rural social space quality. It should be noted that Ward method has a better classification effect among the following five cluster methods, single connection method, complete connection method, average connection method, group average connection method and sum of deviation square method (Ward method). The Euclidean distance is often used as the distance between the classified samples (Hu, 2007).

4.4 Data sources

In this paper, the data mainly came from three sources: (1) The survey data of village status in 2020: Based on the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) method, we conducted a 20-day in-village investigation on Longxi County from April to May 2021, and collected effective data from 11 aspects, including population, social security, facilities, economy, residents’ life, etc. in 213 administrative villages (2 administrative villages inside the urban cadastral survey area of Longxi County were excluded in this paper). (2) The change data of land survey in 2020: the vector data of the border of townships and administrative villages, the square land, the land for science, education, culture and health, and the land for commercial service industry in Longxi County came from the Natural Resource Bureau of Longxi County; (3) Rural housing data: including the data on the investigation and handling of security hidden dangers of rural housing and the data of the self-built houses for operation, which were from the Comprehensive Information Management Platform of Rural Housing in Longxi County.

5 Results

5.1 Variation patterns of the rural social space quality

According to the above evaluation method, the four subsystems and comprehensive social space quality scores of 213 administrative villages were calculated. Using ArcGIS software and natural breakpoint method, the social space quality can be divided into five levels: high level area, medium-high level area, medium level area, medium-low level area and low level area.

5.1.1 Variation pattern of rural social space quality subsystems

Comparing the spatial difference patterns of the four subsystems, i.e., population stability level, education level, living standard, and income level (Figure 3), we found that the spatial distribution of the four subsystems was different. This shows that the villages with lower altitude along Longhai Railway, National Highway G316, and Provincial Highway S14 and adjacent to towns had higher scores, and were mainly in medium-high level area or high level area. The villages with inconvenient transportation and higher altitude had lower scores, they were mainly in medium-low level area or low level area. The scores of population stability level were relatively low, with an average score of 0.4214. Only 68 administrative villages had scores higher than the average score, accounting for 31.92% of the total number of evaluation units. Among them, the high score areas were mainly distributed in the areas surrounding towns and the areas with high altitude and inconvenient transportation, while the medium to low score areas were mostly distributed around the high score areas, especially in the areas surrounding towns. Compared with the population stability level, we found the education level was improved. However, it was still low, with an average score of 0.4080. The score of 85 administrative villages was greater than the average score, accounting for only 39.91% of the total number of evaluation units. The high score areas were mainly distributed in the northeast and central of the county, while the low score areas were mainly distributed in the southwest of the county. The average score of living standard was 0.1913. The scores of 95 administrative villages were greater than the average score, accounting for 44.60% of the total number of evaluation units. There was significant difference from the spatial distribution of the aforementioned subsystems. The high score areas were mostly distributed in the eastern part of the county and around the towns, while the low score areas were mainly distributed in the central area and scattered in the southern area. The average score of income level was 0.2652. The scores of 84 administrative villages were greater than the average score, accounting for 39.44%. The overall level was equivalent to the education level. The high score areas were mostly distributed in the central and western areas of Longxi County, while the low score areas were mainly distributed in the eastern area.
Figure 3 Spatial differences of the rural social space quality subsystems of Longxi County

5.1.2 Variation pattern of comprehensive rural social space quality

The average score of the comprehensive rural social space quality was 0.3061, and only 91 administrative villages had scores higher than the average value, accounting for 42.72%. This indicated that the overall rural social quality in Longxi County was not high (Figure 4). Most of the high score areas were located in the town seats and areas along the main roads, while the low score areas of social quality were located in areas with complex terrain and high altitude. In addition, the social quality level of the administrative villages near the township seats was relatively greater than that of other areas. This showed a certain distance attenuation effect, i.e., the farther away from the township seats, the less radiation was received and the worse the quality level.
Figure 4 Comprehensive evaluation pattern of the rural social space quality of Longxi County

5.2 Rural social space quality types and structure

5.2.1 Division of the rural social space quality types

Based on the score of the 4 subsystems of the above 213 administrative villages, we adopted a systematic clustering analysis method to divide the rural social space quality types. The clustering distance was selected as 10 for the rationality and validity of the results. This can avoid the phenomenon that the clustering results are invalid because of too many or too few divisions. We divided the quality of rural social space in Longxi County into 5 categories (Figure 5): type I area (core area with superior and stable life), type II area (transitional area with superior and stable income), type III area (marginal area with rich income and high quality population aggregation), type IV area (other area with livable life and high quality population aggregation) and type V area (other area with inferior life and low quality population aggregation). The average score of each social space quality type was calculated.
Figure 5 Division of rural social space quality types of Longxi County
(1) Type I area: the core area with superior and stable life. This type area included 22 administrative villages, most of which were the administrative villages of township seats or the administrative villages close to towns. Among them, Gongchang Town had the largest number of administrative villages in this type area. The scores of both population stability and living standard in this type area ranked first among the five type areas, and there was a big gap with other type areas, and the advantages were significant. The education level and income level ranked relatively poor, but their average scores had a small gap with other type areas. The average score of comprehensive social space quality types ranked in the front of the five type areas, and were significantly greater than that of other type areas. It shows that the social space quality of this type area was relatively high as a whole, especially in the population stability level and living standard. In addition, the education level and income level should be improved. Therefore, it was named as the core area with superior and stable life.
(2) Type II area: the transitional area with superior and stable income. This type area included 13 administrative villages, which were distributed in the central and eastern part of Longxi County. The areas close to towns were more distributed. The average score of income level and population stability level in this type area was relatively high. However, the average score of living standard and education level was ranked backward, and there was a big gap with the top score. There was a gap between the average score, and the highest and lowest score of the social space quality. It shows that the income of this type of area is stable, the sources of income are diverse, the population education concept is weak, and the living service facilities need to be improved. Therefore, it was named as the transitional area with superior and stable income.
(3) Type III area: the marginal area with rich income and high-quality population aggregation. This type area included 42 administrative villages, which were mostly distributed in the central and western regions of Longxi County. This type area included 4 administrative villages where the township government was based. The others were mostly distributed near townships, and were distributed in patches together with the administrative villages in other townships. The average score of education level and income level in this type area was relatively high. The score of education level was dominant in this type area, and there was a big gap with other type areas. The average score of population stability level and living standard were relatively low, and there was a big gap between the average score of living standard and the top score of living standard. The average score of social space quality ranked third, but there was a gap with other non-top-one type areas. It shows that this type area had a strong concept of education, many income sources and considerable income. It was far away from the political and economic centers. Therefore, it was named as the marginal area with rich income and high-quality population aggregation.
(4) Type IV area: the other area with livable life and high-quality population aggregation. This type area included 41 administrative villages, mainly distributed in the northeast and eastern parts of Longxi County. Most of them were adjacent to the township seats, and were surrounded by type V area (the other areas with inferior life and low-quality population aggregation) with poor economic conditions and low quality of life. In addition, they were also scattered in the area with superior life and high income. The average score of education level and living standard in this type area was more prominent, second only to the type I area. However, the average score of population stability level and income level ranked low, and there was a big gap with the first score. The average score of social space quality ranked the fourth, and there was a big gap with the first type I area and the last type V area. It shows that the residents’ culture and quality cultivation of this type area were relatively high, and the per capita living service facilities were relatively complete. In addition, most of them were distributed in the areas with complex topography and high altitudes. Therefore, it was named as the other area with livable life and high-quality population aggregation.
(5) Type V area: the other area with inferior life and low-quality population aggregation. This type area included 95 administrative villages, which distribute in various townships. The townships far away from the county areas account for a large proportion, and most of the distributed areas had poor terrain conditions and inconvenient transportation. The average score of subsystems and social space quality of this type area ranked low. Among them, the population stability level and income level were not significantly different from those in the type IV area, and the average score of education level and living standard was not significantly different from those in the type II area. The living conditions of this type area needed to be improved, the education concept and teaching level needed to be improved, and various income sources should be expanded to improve the overall level. Therefore, it was named as the other area with inferior life and low-quality population aggregation.
The social space quality of the five type areas showed a trend of taking the township seats as the core and gradually decreasing outward the administrative villages surrounding the towns. The spatial distribution was similar to that of the “core-marginal” model. The administrative villages where the township government was based and the administrative villages around the town are the core areas. Most of the areas far from the core area and complex terrain conditions are marginal areas. The administrative villages in the middle belonged to the transitional area. This paper also divided other areas, mainly referring to areas with poor quality score for each subsystem and social space, which are staggered in other types of areas. From the point view of the quantity of administrative villages of each type, they conformed to a stable pyramid model. The type V area with poor quality contained the largest number of administrative villages, and its pedestal function was prominent. The number of administrative villages of type III and IV areas at the medium level was significantly less than that of the type V area. This played the key role. The type I and II areas with better overall quality had the least number of administrative villages. This is in line with the principle of social development, that is, the resources and facilities are always concentrated in a few regions.
Table 2 Average scores of the rural social space quality type areas of Longxi County
Rural social space quality type areas Number of administrative villages Average score of population
stability level		 Average score of education level Average score of living
standard		 Average score of income level Average score of rural social space quality
Type I 22 0.6794 0.3956 0.3103 0.2800 0.4116
Type II 13 0.4696 0.3710 0.1730 0.4081 0.3260
Type III 42 0.4111 0.5394 0.1686 0.2821 0.3270
Type IV 41 0.3633 0.4335 0.2623 0.2307 0.3190
Type V 95 0.3847 0.3468 0.1457 0.2497 0.2641

5.2.2 Identification of structure of rural social space quality

According to the spatial variation patterns and the results of type area division in this paper, we identified the structure of rural social space quality in Longxi County (Figure 6). The social space quality in Longxi County showed a spatial structure characterization of “mainly ring variation, supplemented by mutual interlacing”. The core area with higher score of social space quality was mixed with a small number of other transitional area and marginal area with lower quality. There were other areas with lower overall quality in the transitional area and the marginal area. The core area was concentrated around the township seats and urban areas. The transitional area and the marginal area were interlaced around the core area. The other areas mainly occupied the marginal land of Longxi County. This creates a complex socio-spatial structure where various type areas coexist.
Figure 6 Model of the rural social space quality structure in Longxi County
The formation of this spatial structure was closely related to rural location, physical geography and socio-economic conditions. Because townships and urban areas had superior geographical position and prominent functional status, and their population quality, infrastructure and service level were superior to other surrounding areas. First, it attracted the inflow of high-quality talents. Second, this potentially improved the living standard of local population. The areas far away from townships and towns were less affected by radiation. In addition, the land surface of the Loess Hilly Area was too undulating and fragmented, resulting in rural production and life being confined to a narrow space. Besides, the connectivity between natural elements and human elements was strongly restricted, infrastructure construction was relatively difficult, and the convenience of life was reduced. This increased the cost of living to a certain extent, with a corresponding impact on daily activities. The lack of investment in local educational facilities forced residents to spend more time and money, and even took up manpower and material resources, resulting in a low overall local education level. In addition, the structure of social space quality and the population stability level, education level, living standard, and income level influenced and interacted with each other in social development. The population, education, life, and income in high quality areas were improved accordingly, forming a positive feedback. However, those in the low-quality areas may become worse and worse, that is, “the strong are always strong, while the weak are always weak”, forming a path dependence.

5.3 Mechanism analysis: Explanation based on a “social-spatial” perspective

(1) Social level. Market leading is a regenerative force. First, the transformation of economic structure has made the administrative villages adjacent to the township and county seats and distributed along the main road have significant location and resource advantages. The physical environment configuration is relatively complete, and the living standard is correspondingly improved. Second, the opening of labor market caused the outflow of rural surplus labor. This creates vitality for the development of the rural economy, and also makes the stability of the rural population vulnerable. For example, the population stability level is weak in the areas with high income. In addition, the culture and social change are endogenous driving force. The evolution of education level, family structure and population structure are crucial to the sustainable development of rural areas. This shows the quality of rural population, effectively avoid the emergence of “hollow villages” and other phenomena to a certain extent. This effectively improves the rural development potential and the ability to resist other risks. The capital is the direct driving force. Due to the different types of human activities in the history of social development, the background of “production-living-ecological” spaces are different. This makes the difficulty and plasticity of reconstruction different, resulting in different foreign capital preferences and social development evaluation, and unbalanced phenomenon in allocation of infrastructure, resource inclination and external popularity. This contributes to different rural features and development paths.
(2) Spatial level. Spatial effects include agglomeration and dispersion. The dispersion effect mainly means that the distribution of social elements under the influence of administrative units should comprehensively consider the accessibility within the jurisdiction. However, agglomeration effect is influenced by the preference of governments or investors or cost of space. Villages with better development foundation take advantages. The natural environment in the spatial region will inevitably affect the spatial effects, and in turn affect the distribution of social elements in the region. Areas with flat terrain and prosperous road network are relatively more attractive to social elements, such as Gongchang Town, Wenfeng Town, etc. However, areas with complex terrain and far distance from townships and county are relatively more infrastructure configuration to meet the basic needs of daily life. In addition, there are a distance effect and trickle-down effect in space. In general, the closer it was to the political function center, the greater the impact. The barriers to information transmission, the efficiency of technology popularization and the acceptability of residents are better than those in remote areas.
(3) The interweaving effect of society and space. Social elements interweave with space under the impetus of the government and market. The advantages and disadvantages of spatial background characteristics and spatial effects determine the number of social elements allocated in a certain region. The areas with better background generally exert agglomeration effect, and there are more social elements in its configuration. The poorer regional dispersion effect plays a larger role, and the social elements are relatively small. The interaction between society and space makes the elements superimposed in this space not only have quantitative differences, but also deeply affects the living environment and ideological concepts of residents in this spatial region. However, the number of social elements needs to be adapted to the local population and natural environment. The higher the per capita occupancy, the better the quality. That is for this reason that some administrative villages has a large number of infrastructures, but the overall quality is not high.
Figure 7 Formation mechanism of rural social space quality

6 Governance model oriented to the rural social space

The discrimination of superior and inferior for the rural social space quality is formed under the interaction of “society-space”. This mainly acts on the rural “people”, and rural farmers are one of the key subjects of rural governance (Howell, 1998). History showed that rural decline is related to urbanization, market recession, economic contraction, and other factors, leading to the outflow of rural population and the spiral downward of population (Liu and Li, 2017). The population hollowing has reduced the stock and quality of rural human capital, and there is a serious shortage of talents in rural governance (Sun et al., 2021). In the process of urban and rural governance, the cadres of the two committees of villages, entrepreneurs, migrant workers and left-behind population have a significant impact on rural governance under the social impact of modernity (Yao and Shao, 2020). Governance theory has paid attention to the way of multi-organization and individual participation, and advocated urban-rural co-governance (Ye et al., 2021), stimulated the innovation of all forces, and realized the flexible and thorough mobilization of resources, knowledge and technology (Ye and Liu, 2020). Since the implementation of governance policies and measures mostly takes space as the carrier, rural space governance has become the core of rural governance (Ge and Lu, 2021). Therefore, the governance of rural social space should combine the rural internal and external environment, take farmers as the main body, and realize the improvement of internal structure and the optimization of external structure.
Based on the above analysis of population stability level, education level, living standard, and income level, the governance models of different type areas were constructed from four aspects: centripetal force, core force, inner thrust and source power from the perspective of multiple subjects. Rural development needs people, and the ability of rural population stabilization is the rural centripetal force. First, promoting centripetal force can attract talents to contribute to local development and diversify rural life. Second, it can effectively reduce the loss of young adults and stabilize the rural population development structure. The core force mainly refers to the ability brought into play to apply knowledge and make innovation and creation by improving the education level of rural population. First, the improvement of ability to absorb and transform knowledge can promote technological innovation. Second, it can cultivate high level professionals and improve the core competitiveness of rural areas. Inner thrust is the driving force exerted by optimizing the allocation of infrastructure in the process of rural construction and development. First, it can optimize the rural environment, and improve the convenience of residents’ life. In addition, it can improve the probability of capital influx and reduce the cost of infrastructure construction. The source power is to create economic vitality on the basis of the increase in the income level of rural residents, and to further expand the development space while improving the economic level of residents. This can enrich sources of income and revitalize the source of vitality for rural economic development. The centripetal force, core force, inner thrust, and source power complement and interact with each other. For example, the increase in inner thrust improves the construction of rural infrastructure, resulting in the reduction of migrant workers, and further strengthening the centripetal force. The improvement of the education level also makes the economy develop to a certain extent. This not only improves the rural core force, but also has a certain relationship with the growth of rural source power. This is of great significance for realizing effective rural governance and promoting rural development.
Figure 8 Governance framework of the rural social space quality

6.1 Type I area: Model of promoting the core force and source power

The type I area showed that there were many migrant workers and illiteracy. The proportion of college students and above, garbage collection facilities and agricultural income were relatively low, and the overall education level and income level ranked backward. According to the characteristics of this area, it is suggested to focus on enhancing the core force of education and the source power of income. In terms of enhancing core force, multiple subjects are required to participate. First, the governments need to transmit correct educational concepts, actively publicize educational benefits, reverse outdated ideas, fulfill the duty of nine-year compulsory education, and reduce the illiteracy rate in the area. Second, residents in this area should deeply realize that knowledge is power, and actively promote their academic qualifications. In addition, the government should give full play to their location advantages, introduce the professional skills of urban areas into the villages, truly apply knowledge to rural construction, and play the core role of rural main body. In terms of source power, the governments should take advantage of the geographical location of the area, give full play to agricultural versatility to meet the diversified development needs of urban. In addition, villages should combine agritainment and picked gardens to develop characteristic agriculture, leisure and sightseeing agriculture, etc., and change the concept of agricultural abandonment. Second, the cadres of the “two committees” of the villages should invite experts to evaluate the planting conditions such as soil, select suitable agricultural products according to the planting demands of residents, and regularly explain the knowledge of planting key points and disease and pest control skills. This can further improve the agricultural planting level, increase the agricultural income level and reduce the rate of agricultural land vacancy and waste.

6.2 Type II area: Model of promoting the core force and inner thrust

In type II area, the number of people with senior high school education and below was large, while the number of people with college education and above, express outlets, garbage collection facilities and the public service area were small. The education level and living standard were low. Therefore, the government in this type area should focus on the governance in both education and life, especially education. Cultural soft power is an indispensable element in the process of social and historical development, and the core force of rural development. First, the governments should take concrete measures to understand the reasons for the low education level of residents in this area, find suitable compensation measures to reduce the education pressure of residents, and fundamentally solve the problem of “difficult education” for residents. In addition, according to the number of students and the traffic inconvenience caused by the special topography and landforms in the Loess Hilly Area, the government should vigorously support the equal allocation of educational facilities. This can make the cost of education in the district fair, equalize educational opportunities, and promote the implementation of compulsory education, and achieve high-quality education and fair educational opportunities. Second, the cadres of the “two committees” of the villages should summarize the reasons for dropping out of school, clarify the obstacles to the improvement of education level, and take targeted measures according to the special circumstances of each household. In addition, it is necessary to encourage residents to actively broaden their horizons, change their short-sighted attitude towards education, actively arm their minds with knowledge, and enhance their core competitiveness. In terms of living standards, there were many living service facilities shared in the type I area, resulting in fewer infrastructure allocated in the area to a certain extent. The governments should rationally allocate the number of basic service facilities according to the distance from urban areas and the number of rural people, build an infrastructure network, improve the rural living environment and convenience of life, and form a powerful inner thrust in the rural area.

6.3 Type III area: Model of promoting the centripetal force and inner thrust

The population stability level and living standard in the type III area were relatively poor. The number of people who went out to work for more than one year was relatively large, and the number of self-built houses for operation, road hardening degree, express outlets, broadband coverage, garbage collection facilities and area of public service facilities were relatively small. Therefore, the government in the type area should focus on strengthening the construction of living facilities, and improving the population stability level. High quality development is the development that meets people’s growing needs for a better life, and improving people’s living standard is an important part of development. The governments should comprehensively consider the density of residential, and take the special topography of the Loess Hilly Area into account, optimize the allocation quantity and layout of public service facilities, build a village-level community living circle, cultivate residents’ awareness of public participation, deeply understand residents’ needs, rationally allocate and meet the demands of public interests, build a bridge between power and rights, optimize residents’ living environment, and improve the convenience of life. With the improvement of transportation and communication conditions, people in the type area have a form of “going out early and returning late” for nearby work. This effectively reduces the number of “three left-behind” population. In addition, local residents can be encouraged to develop characteristic agriculture and commerce according to local characteristics and residents’ needs. By optimizing and stabilizing income sources, the mobility of rural population can be reduced and the centripetal force of rural development can be enhanced.

6.4 Type IV area: Model of promoting the centripetal force and source power

The per capita net income of the type IV area was little. The income levels of agriculture, migrant workers and business were also uneven, and most of them at the medium and low levels. In addition, the number of people who went out to work for more than one year and the number of “three left-behind” population in this area were large. The age structure was prone to aging, the number of self-built houses used for operation was small, and the income level and population stability level were poor. Therefore, the government in this type area should not only stabilize its population, but also broaden their income channels. Because this type area was far away from the urban areas, it was less affected by urban influence. Compared with the above three type areas, the topography was complicated and did not have convenient transportation. In this case, revitalizing the economy and retaining talents is the driving force for the development of this area. The governments should actively drive residents to participate in industrial development, master economic development resources, and make residents in a state of actively creating the economy. According to the local resource endowment conditions, governments should impart relevant knowledge and drive the rural residents to join the industrial development team. In addition, governments should enhance the driving force of agriculture, actively encourage the residents to form an integrated mode of production and business, strengthen diversified employment training, increase the intensity of labor transfer and the income sources for the migrant workers, and create an integrated service for employment in the agricultural industry. Therefore, the residents will be encouraged to exert diversified demands, innovate commercial development channels and forms, and reduce the number of migrant workers and their time of working out. In addition, the government in this type area should verify the causes of aging, and actively respond to measures to reduce the outflow of young adults. Meanwhile, it should closely follow the national fertility policy, solve the problem of aging, and keep the population structure stable.

6.5 Type V area: Overall promotion model

The type V area was mainly characterized by insufficient centripetal force, serious population outflow, small population with advanced education at college or above, little living and service facilities per capita, uneven income sources and little per capita income. In addition, this area was mostly distributed in the marginal area of Longxi county, and was located in the area with many gullies at high altitude as a whole. The overall level of development environment was lower than that of other type areas. Therefore, it is necessary to combine the above four type areas for comprehensive and effective governance. First, the governments should encourage the residents located in suitable places in this area to develop and form diversified business networks. This alleviates the problem of “three left-behind” population caused by population outflow to a certain extent. The government should combine the integration of the traditional Chinese medicine production and sales in Longxi so as to develop local industries and increase income sources. This can effectively solve the problem of the residents going out to work, and enhance the centripetal force and source power of this area. Second, the governments should strengthen the infrastructure construction in this area, especially the educational facilities and their daily living facilities, improve the convenience of the residents’ schooling and living, create a high-quality living environment, reduce the rate of talent loss. This provides a professional foundation for the construction of this area, build a “road to prosperity” connected with the outside world. The government can enhance the core force and inner thrust from the experiences and lessons and technologies in other four type areas, etc.

7 Discussion and conclusions

7.1 Discussion

The study of social space quality is important for the rural sustainable development. The social space quality is derived from the social space, and refers to the regional variation pattern with differences in village development potential, living environment, residents’ living standard, and ideological concepts caused by the differences in rural social and historical development and structural functions. Based on the connotation of the social space quality, this paper selected 17 indicators from the subsystems of population stability, education level, living standard, and income level to construct an evaluation index system of the social space quality, so as to measure the differences of the rural social space quality. It can effectively show the system form and structural changes in the complex rural regions, and realize rural revitalization and effective rural governance. The spatial distribution of scores of individual subsystems was significantly different. The social space quality structure was mainly in a ring structure, and the core area was the administrative villages where township governments are based and their surrounding areas. All type areas were staggered each other. This is consistent with previous findings on rural space and rural quality. The rural social space quality was quite different. Less than 50% of the administrative villages have the quality of each subsystem higher than the average score of each subsystem. Based on the division of quality type areas, this paper deconstructed the structure of the rural social space quality in Longxi County. Therefore, based on the theoretical foundation, we put forward a rural governance model to balance the internal gap and commit to the system structure, transformation process, evolution mechanism, variation pattern and regional function of rural regions under the interaction of human and natural system by starting from multiple subjects and combining with the special terrain in the Loess Hilly Area (Liu et al., 2020). In addition, rural development cannot be “closed-door policy”. It is necessary to use of the power of cities, the support of multi-disciplinary knowledge and technology, transform power into rights, and dilute the urban and rural dual system, realize urban-rural co-governance and narrow the gap between urban and rural development (Ye and Yu, 2020).
This paper made an in-depth exploration of the rural social space based on the study of urban social space quality, comprehensively evaluated the rural social space quality, and paid attention to the analysis of the differentiation of the social space quality. This was different from the focus and approach of traditional social space research. The traditional social space structure research extracted the main factors by selecting numerous indicators, and deconstructed and simply analyzed the social elements. However, the analysis of space quality in this paper integrated the social elements in certain spatial regions to comprehensively evaluate the regional space quality, this had good consistency and quantification. In this paper, the systematic clustering analysis method is selected to classify the types of social spatial quality. This can better show the quality of spatial elements compared with those that scholars divided the social areas by using factor analysis method alone or combining with cluster analysis method. The factor analysis method has advantages in extracting the main spatial elements, but also discards some essential elements of space. The divided social areas can only reflect part of the information. The cluster analysis brings all spatial elements into the evaluation scope. This can comprehensively evaluate the social space quality.
There are some limitations in this paper. First, due to the limitation of data acquisition, only one cross-section data in 2020 was selected for research. The spatial difference pattern of long-term quality change and its quality reconstruction characteristics cannot be tracked and studied. In addition, although the selection of the four subsystems and their corresponding indicators combined with the rural characteristics, the entire system is based on the related research of urban social space. There are differences between the urban and rural areas to a certain extent. In future research, it is necessary to combine the long-term tracking data to improve the space quality evaluation system.

7.2 Conclusions

By calculating the rural social space quality of 213 administrative villages in Longxi County, this paper classified the social space quality types by means of systematic cluster analysis, summarized the structure and model of the type areas, discussed the formation mechanism and put forward some governance suggestions. The main conclusions are as follows:
(1) The distribution of the social space quality of administrative villages was uneven, and the quality levels were quite different. The rural social space quality was gradually decreasing around the township seat and urban areas. The eastern part of Longxi County had higher education level and living standard, while the western part had better population stability level and income level. Among the 213 administrative villages, less than or equal to 50% of the administrative villages scored higher than the average score of each subsystem and the comprehensive quality of social space. There are 51 administrative villages with scores higher than the average score of each subsystem, accounting for only 23.94%. Among the four subsystems, the difference in average scores in descending order was: population stability level > income level > education level > living standard.
(2) The social space quality of administrative villages was dominated by a ring structure, supplemented by the interlaced structure. The core area was located in the township seats and the surrounding areas, and the overall quality of life in this area was superior and stable. The transition area was adjacent to the core area, and the income level in this area was relatively high. The marginal area and other areas were far away from the core area. The education level in marginal area was high. The overall quality in other areas was lower. In addition, various type areas were in interlaced and inlaid distribution.
(3) Social forces and spatial functions had jointly shaped the social space quality. Market, cultural, social changes and capital were the factors for the distribution of social elements. In addition, they were influenced by spatial effects. This eventually led to the differences in the geographical distribution of social elements, making the social space quality superior or inferior.
(4) The governance models of different type areas were constructed from four aspects: centripetal force, core force, inner thrust, and source power. The governance models of the type I to V areas were the model of promoting the core force and source power, the model of promoting the core force and inner thrust, the model of promoting the centripetal force and inner thrust, the model of promoting the centripetal force and source power, as well as the overall promotion model.

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