Structure and governance model of rural social space quality: A case study of Longxi County in the Loess Hilly Area of China

The rural social space quality is an important indicator to measure the living standard and thinking ideas and so forth of rural residents in a certain region. In this paper, 213 administrative villages in Longxi County of the Loess Hilly Area, China are taken as evaluation units to construct the evaluation model of the rural social space quality. This paper deeply analyzed the variation patterns and their formation mechanism of the rural social space quality at a village scale, and proposed a governance model based on the rural social space quality. The results show that: (1) the social space quality levels of individual administrative villages show a gradually decreasing trend from the township seats to outward. The eastern part of Longxi County has a relatively high education level and living standard, and the western part has a relatively high population stability level and income level. (2) The rural social space quality is mainly in a ring structure, supplemented by the interlaced structure. The core area is the towns and their surrounding areas, while the transition area, marginal area, and other areas are expanded around the core area. (3) Social forces and spatial effects jointly shape the variation of the rural social space quality. Social organizations provide a driving force for the allocation of elements, and interweaving with the spatial effects lead to the differences in the social space quality. (4) The governance models of the rural social space quality are constructed based on the principles of retaining the rural “people”, optimizing the rural “land”, and developing the rural “industry”, so as to improve the rural centripetal force, core force, inner thrust, and source power.