The Impact Factors and Management Policy of Digital Village Development: A Case Study of Gansu Province, China

Ping Zhang, Weiwei Li (), Kaixu Zhao, Yi Zhao, Hua Chen and Sidong Zhao ()
Additional contact information
Ping Zhang: College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Jiaxing University, Jiaxing 314001, China
Weiwei Li: Urban-Rural Construction College, Guangxi Vocational University of Agriculture, Nanning 530007, China
Kaixu Zhao: College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Northwest University, Xi’an 710127, China
Yi Zhao: Lanzhou Engineering &Research Institute of Nonferrous Metallurgy Co., Ltd., Lanzhou 730070, China
Hua Chen: College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Jiaxing University, Jiaxing 314001, China
Sidong Zhao: School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-32

Abstract: (1) Background: Along with the maturity of smart cities, digital villages and smart villages are receiving more attention than ever before as the key to promote sustainable rural development. The Chinese government has made great efforts in promoting the digital development of villages in recent years, as evidenced by policies intensively introduced by the central and local governments, making China a typical representative country in the world. (2) Methods: This paper evaluates the performance and geographic pattern of rural digital development by the Geographic Information System (GIS) in Gansu, a less developed province in western China, and analyzes the driving mechanism of rural digital development using GeoDetector, providing a basis for spatial zoning and differentiated policy design for the construction, planning and management of digital villages based on the GE matrix. (3) Results: First, the development of digital villages shows a prominent geographical imbalance, with 79 counties divided into leader, follower and straggler levels. Second, digital villages show unsynchronized development in different dimensions, with the village facilities digitalization index in the lead and the village economy digitalization index lagging behind. Thirdly, the development of digital villages is characterized by significant spatial correlation and spillover effects, with cold and hot counties distributed in clusters, forming a “center-periphery” structure. Fourth, the factors show significant influence differentiation. They are classified into all-purpose, multifunctional and single-functional factors by their scope of action, and into key, important and auxiliary factors by their intensity of action. Fifth, the interaction and driving mechanism between different factors is quite complex, dominated by nonlinear enhancement and bifactor enhancement, and the synergistic effect of factor pairs helps increase the influence by 1–4 times. (4) Conclusions: It is suggested that the government develop differentiated policies for zoning planning and management based on the level of digital development of villages in combination with the factor influence and its driving mechanism and promote regional linkage and common development and governance through top-level design.

Keywords: rural digitalization; smart village; influence factor; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/3/616/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/3/616/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:12:y:2023:i:3:p:616-:d:1088054

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().