ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Land Use Dynamics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1626893
This article is part of the Research TopicMoving Towards Sustainable Development: Exploring the Impact of Land-Use Policies on Land Green Utilization EfficiencyView all 11 articles
Research on the Impact of Urban-Rural Integration on Rural Land Use Efficiency in China
Provisionally accepted
Hongxin Liu1,2
Xiaoxin Liu3*- 1Open University of China, Beijing, China
- 2School of Economics and Management，The Open University of China, Beijing, China
- 3Hebei Open University, 石家庄, China
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As a core strategy in China's modernization process during the new era, urban-rural integration development is imperative for expanding the development space of Chinese-style modernization and advancing high-quality growth. This paper uses the panel data of provincial levels in China from 2012 to 2023 to construct a three-level indicator system to measure the level of urban-rural integration and rural land utilization efficiency in China's provinces, and explores the impact mechanism of China's urban-rural integration on rural land utilization efficiency. Findings include: (1) Urban-rural integration significantly enhances rural land use efficiency; (2) Mechanism analysis demonstrates that urban-rural integration boosts land transfer rates and labor mobility between urban and rural areas, thereby improving land use efficiency; (3) Regional heterogeneity analysis reveals stronger promoting effects in eastern and western regions, with statistically insignificant impacts in central China. Policy recommendations are proposed, focusing on establishing market-driven resource allocation mechanisms, implementing region-specific policies, and improving collaborative governance of land transfer and labor mobility. This research provides empirical support for deepening the theory of urban-rural integration, optimizing the allocation of land resources, formulating differentiated policies, and resolving regional development imbalances.
Keywords: Urban-rural integration, rural land use efficiency, Land transfer, labor mobility between urban and rural areas, Mediating mechanism
Received: 12 May 2025; Accepted: 05 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaoxin Liu, Hebei Open University, 石家庄, China
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