From rural hollowing to smart shrinkage: zonal governance considering spatial non-stationary effects

Abstract

The phenomenon of rural depopulation poses a critical challenge to sustainable rural development and requires evaluation through the lens of smart shrinkage. Existing research has inadequately explored the formation of rural hollowing from the village environmental perspective, generally neglecting the spatial non-stationary effects. This study addresses this gap by constructing a theoretical model based on residential field and power theory using a full-sample survey of rural households. It innovatively applies the Geographically Weighted XGBoost (GWXGBoost) model combined with the SHAP method for analysis. The results demonstrate that GWXGBoost outperforms conventional methods in regression performance. Rural hollowing in the study area exhibits a ring-like pattern, with moderately and severely hollow villages accounting for 45% and 43% of all villages, respectively. Living and location fields significantly influence hollowing. In addition, the spatial non-stationarity of influencing factors also displays a ring-like differentiation. Customized management strategies are proposed for each area, including enhancing the economic momentum and promoting balanced urban-rural integration of suburban villages; improving accessibility for remote villages with high hollowing, building on existing development trajectories and supporting villagers’ self-directed initiatives for remote villages with low hollowing villages; for villages in the middle zone, strategies include encouraging the upgrade and reutilization of dilapidated housing, conducting land consolidation, and promoting agricultural modernization.