Rural Effectiveness Evaluation: A New Way of Assessing Village Development Status

Abstract

China is currently at a crucial stage of rural revival and transformation growth. Accurate measurement of rural development status is able to provide decision-making services for rural revitalization plan implementation. To address this issue, combining with effectiveness concepts and on the basis of the widely recognized “production–living–ecology” perspective of rural development in the world, this study proposes an innovative technical evaluating system for rural effectiveness. We constructed a rural effectiveness evaluation index system and measurement model, as well as a four-quadrant approach to identify the effectiveness of villages, selecting Xintai county, a typical resource-depleted city, for empirical analysis to verify the evaluation technical system. The results show that (1) 220 villages had comprehensive effectiveness, accounting for 27.8% of the total; the amount of effectiveness for villages in terms of the production, living, and ecological dimensions were 204, 229 and 195, respectively, and they clearly displayed heterogeneity in terms of spatial distribution. (2) The following are village effectiveness dominant types: the function dominates the comprehensive effectiveness. For each dimension, there is a functionally dominant type. (3) Bivariate Moran’s I analysis revealed the relationships’ internal effectiveness. In the same dimension, there was a conflict between efficiency and function. In each dimension, trade-offs were found between the production function, ecological function, living efficiency, as well as production efficiency, ecological function, and efficiency. Synergies were found among the production function and ecological efficiency. Living efficiency had synergies with production efficiency and ecological efficiency. This research enriched the theoretical approach of assessing rural development status and can help guide the rational conversion of village elements to achieve village transformation and sustainability development, as well as providing technical assistance for the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy.