Mi Zhou

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the influence of rural digital governance on farmers’ participation in the improvement of the human-settled environment and its mechanism of action. Design/methodology/approach: Based on the field survey data from Liaoning Province, China in 2022, this study empirically analyzed the impact of rural digital governance on farmers’ participation in the improvement of the human-settled environment. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Conditional Mixed Process Estimation (CMP) were utilized to address endogenous issues. Findings: Rural digital governance facilitates farmers’ participation in the improvement of the human-settled environment. Its promotion mechanism is mainly accomplished through four aspects: improving farmers’ health literacy, strengthening the connection among villagers, increasing non-agricultural employment opportunities, and increasing their sense of political efficacy. The interest between farmers and villages significantly and positively moderates the influence of rural digital governance on farmers’ participation in the improvement of the rural human-settled environment, and the digital governance approach exhibits obvious family heterogeneity. Further analysis reveals that rural digital governance can significantly enhance farmers’ participation in toilet reform and sewage treatment. Originality/value: This study incorporates multiple dimensions, such as toilet renovation, domestic sewage treatment, and domestic waste management into the same analytical framework, and discloses the internal logic of how rural digital governance promotes farmers’ participation in the improvement of the rural human-settled environment through multiple channels, offering novel insights for studies of the rural human-settled environment in developing countries.

Rural tourism plays a crucial role in driving the sustainable development of rural economies. With the rise of the digital economy, user-generated content (UGC) videos on platforms such as TikTok have become a significant factor influencing consumer decision-making, creating new opportunities for the growth of rural tourism. Using the TikTok app as the research platform, this study examines the relationship between UGC short videos, tourists' intentions to engage in rural tourism, and their perception of destination image. Specifically, it explores the impact of UGC short videos on tourists' willingness to participate in rural tourism and the mediating role of destination image perception. The findings indicate that UGC short videos positively influence tourists' willingness to engage in rural tourism. Destination image perception mediates this relationship, shaping tourists' decisions through cognitive and emotional image perceptions. Based on these findings, this paper recommends rural tourism destination managers enhance promotional strategies and improve destination image perception through UGC short video content.

Strengthening rural domestic sewage treatment has practical significance for the rural living environment. Based on household survey data from Liaoning Province, China, this paper explores the effects of household endowment and village head credibility on the use of clean sewage treatment methods. Our results indicate that there is a positive correlation between household endowment and the use of clean sewage treatment methods. The credibility of village cadres plays a positive moderating role in the influence of household endowment on the behavior of households using clean sewage treatment methods. The age and non-agricultural work experience of the respondents are also correlated with the use of clean sewage treatment methods in rural households, but the specific effects are different in each dimension of household endowment. This article proposes policy recommendations such as considering the endowment level of rural households, emphasizing the cultivation of trust capital for village cadres, and increasing environmental education.

In recent years, the thorough implementation of China’s green development concept has compelled local governments to devote more attention to environmental issues. This study aimed to verify whether increased government environmental attention (GEA) can sustainably ensure the implementation of environmental governance, particularly air pollution control. Using government work reports (GWRs) from local governments, this study employed machine learning methods to identify and quantify the attitudes of government officials as expressed in policy texts. A weighted dictionary method was used to quantify GEA from 2011 to 2016. The results of spatial econometric models indicated that air pollution exhibited positive spatial clustering effects across different regions, with the Yangtze River Delta and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region being classified as high–high areas, while the western regions were classified as low–low areas. Baseline regression results showed that increased GEA can improve the effectiveness of pollution control, but excessive attention leads to a decline in governance efficiency. Overall, this study helps explain the unsustainability of campaign-style environmental governance and provides guidance for local governments on the rational allocation of attention when addressing environmental issues.

Background Speedy urban development over the preceding years has been with the migration of laborers in rural China. The essential inquiry that has arisen pertains to whether the experience of workers’ movement has a long-term mixed influence on the human capital accumulation among rural offspring. The goal of current study is to address how parental early left-behind event relates to long-time development outcomes in rural offspring. Methods This paper uses a nationally representative dataset from China Family Panel Studies to investigate whether parental early left-behind event impacts the prevalence of human capital among rural children. To do so, this paper uses econometric models to analyze the causality between parental early left-behind event and the offspring’s human capital accumulation, and then uses sensitivity analysis to test robustness. Results We find evidence that rural children whose parents have left-behind event in early life have fewer human capital. These findings also differ markedly by the heterogeneity of parental left-behind event. Further, mothers who have experienced being left behind are more likely to allocate increased time to their offspring. Conversely, fathers who have experienced being left behind tend to exhibit lower socioeconomic outcomes within homes and put fewer investments in children’s education. Conclusions Our study proposes that there is strong correlation between parental early left-behind event and children’s development. Based on our findings, it is recommended that the Chinese government should take measures to minimize instances of involuntary separation between parents and children caused by institutional limitations. This action is crucial for enhancing the human capital outcomes among rural offspring.

With the increasing prevalence of depression among children and adolescents, understanding the role of peer contagion in the spread of emotional distress is a critical area of research. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of classmates’ depression on a rural child’s own depression in China (aged 9–17, N = 1777). The study controls for possible endogeneity of peer effects through the instrumental variable method (the Wald F statistic is significant at the 1% level) and random class assignment data (all students and teachers are randomly assigned to classes).The results indicate that when the average depression score of a rural child’s classmates increases by 1 point, that child’s own depression score is likely to increase by 0.345 points (p value < .01).This study further finds that the contagion of depression among classmates is more severe for girls and children who play online games, and less severe for children who are cheerful and good-humored. Online games may be an important mechanism through which peer effects operate. Children’s classmates’ negative emotions are found to increase the occurrence of the children’s internalizing behavior in online games, in turn increasing the occurrence of negative emotions in these children themselves.

Purpose: The aim of the study is to investigate the interactive influence of depression on left-behind (LB) and non-left-behind (NLB) children from the perspective of peer effects. The roles of teachers, parents, and friends are also explored. Methods: Data on 1817 children, 1817 parents, and 55 teachers were obtained from a field survey in December 2021. All students in the sample were randomly assigned to classrooms. A peer effect model and OLS methods were used to estimate the peer influence of depression. Robustness tests were conducted by randomly removing schools from the sample. Results: Depression was contagious among different groups of rural children, and the peer effect of the NLB children’s depression played a dominant role. Both LB and NLB children were more affected by their NLB classmates’ depression. LB children were not significantly affected by depression in other LB children. This conclusion remains robust after robustness testing. In addition, heterogeneity analysis showed that outgoing and cheerful teachers, effective parent–child communication and high-quality friendship all alleviated peer influence on depression. Conclusions: LB children have more severe depression than NLB children, but LB children are more affected by depression in their NLB peers. Policymakers should train teachers to engage in positive communication with students to improve mental health in children. In addition, this article recommends that children move and live with their parents when family conditions permit.

With the growing problem of childhood obesity, unhealthy dietary preferences among children have become an issue of worldwide concern. This article examines the class-peer effect of these preferences using random class assignment data from a field survey. The results show significant positive peer effects for both unhealthy food and beverages preference. These results remained robust after controlling for endogeneity issues using instrumental variables. Further analysis of the mechanism of peer effect shows that the better the relationship between classmates, the greater the influence peers have on unhealthy diet preferences among rural children. The same peer effect is found in situations where it is easy for children to obtain unhealthy food and beverages. The analysis of heterogeneity finds that the peer effects of unhealthy dietary preferences are stronger for girls, older students, and obese students. This paper also discusses the role of parents and schools in mitigating the peer effect. This paper proposes policy recommendations for rural areas in China to improve dietary preferences in children. These results may also provide useful guidelines for policy in other developing countries.

Improving the inclusiveness of urban development is crucial to improving the wages of low- and middle-income workers. In this study, we used machine learning to cluster urban labor into low, middle, and high socioeconomic groups in order to analyze the effects of economic agglomeration and compare them with the results, which were classified according to income. The results showed that economic agglomeration has improved the wages of the low and middle socioeconomic groups; the estimated wage spillover effect was 3.9%. By contrast, the estimated result based on the groups classified by a single index of income was 20.3%, which represents an overestimation of the wage spillover effect of economic agglomeration. This method is often used to explain the inclusiveness of China’s urbanization, leading to overestimation. Further mechanism analysis found that the characteristics of the industrial structure affect the change in wage elasticity caused by economic agglomeration, which has a moderating effect on the wages of workers. The differing wage elasticity associated with economic agglomeration is responsible for wage disparities in China.