Impacts of village consolidation on household livelihood resilience in coal resource-exhausted areas

Abstract

Enhancing livelihood resilience is critical importance for rural households, as it enables the mitigation of external risks and fosters the development of sustainable livelihoods. Village consolidation (VC), a key public policy in rural areas, plays a significant role in ameliorating households' production and living conditions, thereby fostering sustainable rural development. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated the impacts of VC on household livelihood resilience (HLR), particularly in coal resource-exhausted areas. To bridge this gap, we surveyed 498 households in northern Jiangsu and southern Shandong, China, to quantify the impacts of three modes of VC—village migration consolidation, characteristic village consolidation, and rural infrastructure renovation—on HLR using the difference-in-differences model. We developed an analytical framework for HLR that incorporates three resilience dimensions: buffering capacity, adaptive capacity, and the capacity to exploit external resources. Our findings show that the three modes of VC all had positive impacts on HLR, underscoring the importance of VC as a pivotal approach for improving resilience and reducing livelihood vulnerability. However, variations in village development conditions and the specific VC mode led to differing effects on HLR. Characteristic village consolidation had the most pronounced positive impact, followed by rural infrastructure renovation, with village migration consolidation having the least impact. Besides, the implementation of village migration consolidation negatively affected households’ adaptive capacity. These findings indicate that future policies should not only focus on increasing investment in VC but also implement differentiated HLR development measures tailored to the specific needs of each VC mode in coal resource-exhausted areas.