Academic Pressure or Emotional Detachment? The Complex Effect of Compulsory Boarding Due to the School Merger Policy

In the context of rapid urbanization, the school merger policy has been widely implemented in rural China since the early twenty-first century, generating significant augment in the demand for boarding at school. Using 738 samples from a national sample database (China Family Panel Studies) in 2016 and 2018, this exploratory study employed a difference-in-differences (DID) model to explore the impact of boarding on the academic pressure of students in rural primary and secondary schools after the implementation of school merger policy from the emotional and spatial distance perspective. The results are robust when subject to propensity score matching and difference-in-differences (PSM–DID) and random sampling tests. Further analysis reveals that forced boarding would intensify academic pressure by impairing students' emotional experiences. The increase in parent–child emotional distance will negatively strengthen the impact of boarding on students' learning pressure, while from the perspective of spatial distance, students who live far away from their parents due to boarding face greater learning pressure. This study has important policy implications for school mental health practice of boarding schools.