1. Introduction
In developing countries, the problem of unbalanced urban and rural development and insufficient rural development is prominent. The most intuitive expression is the obvious gaps between urban and rural residential environments [
1,
2]. The UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) reaffirmed the commitment of governments to a sustainable human residential environment [
3]. How to achieve the sustainable development of human settlements at different levels (cities, towns, and countries) is still a major issue facing the world [
4]. As the largest developing country in the world, China has a large population pressure, insufficient resources, and limited environmental carrying capacity [
5,
6]. Due to the inherent imperfection of the ecological environment and the rigid constraints of economic growth, the contradiction between economic development and environmental protection is more prominent [
6]. Especially in China’s pre-development period, limited by the urban-rural dual institutions, rural environmental governance has lagged far behind the city [
7,
8]. Against this backdrop, the Chinese government has put rural environmental governance on its agenda and introduced policies, and called on governments at all levels and grassroots organizations to make the issue a priority [
9,
10,
11]. Recently, China’s State Council has promulgated successive policy measures such as
the Three-Year Action Plan for Rural residential environment Governance (2018–2020) and
the Five-Year Action Plan for rural residential environment governance and Upgrading (2021–2025). As reflected in the transition from “three years of action” to “five years of improvement” in the document, China’s RRE revitalization has entered a new phase based on strengthening comprehensive governance effectiveness. [
11].
Rural residential environment governance has received unprecedented attention from the Chinese government [
9,
10]. With joint efforts, the rural living environment has improved [
12]. However, the Chinese government ‘s traditional ‘top-down‘ governance model has encountered bottlenecks in advancing RRE governance [
11,
13]. The RRE governance process encountered resource utilization is inefficient, falling into the dilemma of “high input, low efficiency.” The main reasons are farmers excessive dependence on government funds and support, and enthusiasm and initiative are lacking [
14,
15,
16]. However, farmers are the primary stakeholders in RRE, assuming the roles of maintainer, super-visor, and beneficiary [
17,
18]. Without the effective participation of farmers, the effectiveness and sustainability of RRE governance are weakened [
16,
19]. Thus, mobilizing the active participation of farmers is crucial for building and maintaining livable villages and meeting long-term development goals.
It is difficult to avoid farmers’ free-riding behavior due to the nature of public goods nature, the diversity of interests, and the complexity of the environmental problem. The new institution of the economic theory states that there are two types of institutions: formal and informal. North holds the point that the informal institution is an agreed-upon and standard code of conduct that people gradually form in the long-term social interaction process and are recognized by society [
20]. Existing research has demonstrated that in addition to formal institutions, farmers’ behavior is also influenced by informal institutions [
10,
21,
22]. As Dlangalala et al. found, informal rules positively impacted smallholder awareness of water management issues related to collective irrigation in South Africa [
23]. Moreover, Mastewal et al. found that informal institutions were critical for increasing Ugandan farmers’ investment in sustainable crop intensification. Yu Cao et al. reported that informal institutions positively impacted Chinese farmers’ use of clean energy [
24,
25]. In summary, the importance of informal institutions on farmers’ behavior. In China, villager autonomy is the fundamental political system to maintain rural governance, and committees elected by villagers are responsible for managing rural public affairs [
26]. The village committee forms a set of village regulations based on local customs and farmers’ consensus opinions [
22]. These regulations are the important institutional basis of villager autonomy, which enables members to carry out self-management, self-education, and self-restraint [
20]. Village regulation is the most significant and extensive part of the Chinese rural informal institutions. Village regulation is the most significant and extensive part of the Chinese rural informal institutions [
21]. Thus, what is the effect of the informal institutions represented by village regulations on RRE? The question deserves further consideration.
Whether institutions can be recognized, understood, and strictly implemented in the RRE process requires not only government intervention but also active docking at the micro level, such as rural grassroots organizations [
27]. In China, village committees are semi-governmental, with the government “steering” and village committees “rowing,” and village committees playing a critical role in facilitating and coordinating RRE governance. Village committees, which are staffed by village leaders who are elected by the villagers, have a natural connection with local farmers and their customs and traditions [
28]. Thus, village cadres perform dual roles of “government agents” and “farmers’ stewards” by assisting the government in performing “official duties” while managing “village affairs” for villagers [
29]. As far as RRE governance is concerned, the positive interactive relationship between village cadres and villagers is embodied in the exchange and sharing of resources for the unified goal. Eventually, they form a long-term and stable relationship of mutual dependence and cooperation [
25]. The quality of the relationship between cadres and farmers will further affect the mobilization effect of farmers [
29]. Studies indicate that the close cadre-mass relationship impacted agricultural waste recycling, infrastructure management, and land expropriation compensation efforts [
22,
25,
30] and maintains village discipline while standardizing farmers’ cooperation and collective action.
To the best of our knowledge, the contribution of this paper to the existing literature is as follows. On the one hand, concerning the research subject, as China’s RRE governance advances, differences in farmers’ behavior are no longer simply a matter of whether or not to participate but more of the degree of participation. However, existing research on the degree of farmers’ participation has mostly focused on a particular aspect of RRE governance or is based on farmers’ evaluation of their own participation. There is a lack of multidimensional measurement of farmers’ actual participation in RRE governance. Thus, this study explores and consummates the evaluation index system to measure the degree of farmers’ participation in RRE governance and enrichment of the existing literature. On the other hand, concerning the research perspective, under the villager autonomy system of rural society in China, environmental village regulations and village cadres are important factors in mobilizing farmers to participate in the governance of public affairs. Institutions are undifferentiated for any individual. However, in the “pattern of difference sequence“ centered on village cadres, village cadres cannot be undifferentiated for all villagers. What is the impact of the cadre-mass relationship on the implementation of the informal village institutions, and whether there is an interaction between the two is worth exploring. However, most of the previous studies analyzed the rural informal institutions or CMR from a single perspective, rarely into a unified framework for specialized exploration. The answers to the above questions have important practical significance to comprehensively improve the quality of the rural living environment, narrow the gap between urban and rural areas and build a moderately prosperous society in an all-around way.
In view of this research gap, based on the survey data of 1804 farmers in Shaanxi Province, China, this paper, from the perspective of mobilization governance, empirically analyzes the impact of informal village institutions, the cadre-mass relationship and their interaction on farmers’ participation in RRE governance through the entropy method, ols, and quantile regression model. Specifically, this research addresses the following three main targets: (1) How and to what extent do informal institutions, and cadre-mass relationships affect the degree of farmers’ participation in RRE governance? (2) What is the interactive influence of informal institutions and cadre-mass relationships on farmers’ participation in RRE governance? (3) What are the changing trends in the impact of informal institutions and cadre-mass relationships on farmers’ participation in RRE governance?
5. Discussion
RRE has the attribute of public goods, and environmental property rights cannot be clearly defined [
42]. Farmers often have a passive attitude and a wait-and-see mentality in the process of RRE, which frequently leads to the phenomenon of the “tragedy of the commons.” It is necessary to optimize and strengthen the construction of environmental institutions and reduce free riding by farmers. In rural China, which has special social forms, institutional rules represent exogenous forces, which are difficult to embed in relationships and human society [
21]. In other words, if an institution cannot be integrated into the structure of rural society, it will be high in cost and low in effectiveness [
43]. The important contribution of this paper is to put the informal institutions and CMR elements into a unified framework to verify the relevant inferences with actual survey data.
There are significant regional differences in the cultural customs of rural society [
44]. When promoting environmental governance, adapting national unified policies and measures to these different conditions is difficult. However, rural grass-roots organizations originated and developed according to the needs of the specific situation, and the organizing rules that they developed reflect the common will of farmers and have a greater binding force. Informal institutions play an important role in regulating farmers’ behavior in various rural affairs [
45]. Therefore, this paper focuses on informal institutions, examines their impact on farmers’ participation in RRE, and confirms the conclusions of the relevant literature. For example, different informal institutions will have different impacts on farmers’ environmental governance behaviors [
46]. Specifically, as shown in model (2) in
Table 4, the effects of value-oriented and disciplinary supervision regulations are statistically significant. This is consistent with previous findings on environmental governance behaviors of farmers in terms of green production and concentrated disposal of municipal solid waste [
22,
47] and again confirms the importance of informal institutions in encouraging farmers to participate in RRE. However, the transmission internalization mechanism did not play its expected role; instead, there is a “relative institutional failure” situation. Based on the actual situation of the research area, the rural community consciousness declines with the acceleration of rural population mobility. The participation of some members in village public affairs continues to decline, and the collective action mechanism becomes loose. Although informal institutions provide an important organizational basis and behavioral norms for village environmental governance, their binding force is increasingly showing signs of weakness. Even in some villages, formalization and virtualization of informal institutions have occurred.
Village cadres are a communication bridge among farmers, which helps them reach a consensus and improve their initiative and consciousness to participate in environmental governance. It has been verified by empirical analysis that CMR is the key to improving RRE, as shown in model (2) in
Table 5. CMR could lead farmers to participate in RRE in many ways. First, as a key minority group, village cadres play a leading role in rural governance. In the intimate association between cadres and the masses, the thoughts and behaviors of village cadres exert a demonstration role. Second, village cadres play a key role in connecting the government and farmers [
26]. Frequent association between cadres and the masses helps in the formation of a two-way communication mechanism of RRE and ensures the accuracy of policy information conveyed. Finally, a good relationship between cadres and the masses can improve farmers’ emotional attitude towards village cadres and their trust in the institution, which can guide farmers’ initiative to participate in village public affairs.
It is noteworthy that the interaction terms between CMR and disciplinary supervision, CMR, and transmission internalization mechanisms are statistically significant. The results of this paper show that good CMR can reshape the village transmission internalization mechanism and bring its influence back into play. This is because the interaction between cadres and the masses is a process wherein the village cadres can comprehend the perspectives of the masses and communicate with them, which can provide a channel for ordinary villagers to express their wishes and actual demands. This solves the problem of unstandardized and undemocratic informal institutions in practice and also unifies the value tendency of farmers and informal institutions, which can internalize the transmission of informal institutions into the conscious activity of farmers. Furthermore, the alienation of CMR will inevitably increase the mobilization cost of RRE, thus weakening the effect of policy implementation. Therefore, effective governance of RRE cannot be achieved without the dual power of informal institutions and the CMR.
It should be noted that the possible shortcomings of this study are: First, the CMR was the core explanatory variable of this study. However, limited data permits only a single Likert5 scale to be used for quantification that, in some cases, may affect the model estimation accuracy. Warranting future development of more mature measurement scales that may enhance the scientific validity of research results. Secondly, the household survey data used in this study were limited by the questionnaire design, the time of data collection, and the study area. As a result, it is not sufficient to reflect the current situation of RRE governance in the country. In future studies, the scope should be expanded to cover a greater number of regions and a more diverse set of public affairs governance systems in order to test these findings in different contexts.
6. Conclusions
Based on the survey data of 1804 farmers in China, this paper, from the perspective of mobilization governance, empirically analyzes the impact of informal village institutions, the cadre-mass relationship, and their interaction on farmers’ participation in RRE governance. It finds that informal institutions promoted farmers’ participation through three mechanisms, with disciplinary supervision impact being the most significant and value-oriented regulations next in significance, but transmission internalization mechanism impact did not pass the significance test. Meanwhile, establishing a close CMR can significantly promote farmers’ participation in RRE governance, and a close CMR can reinforce the impact of disciplinary supervision and transmission internalization mechanisms on farmers’ participation. In addition, from the quantile regression model, there is a general difference in informal institutions’ governance effect on farmers with varying degrees of participation. Specifically, the impact of value-oriented regulations on farmers’ participation shows a “V-type” trend. The overall trend of the impact of disciplinary supervision on farmers’ participation is rising and then declining. The effect of the transmission internalization mechanism on farmers’ participation exhibits a “non-standard W-type” trend.
According to the conclusions obtained in this study, the following implications can be made: First, the government must design diversified informal institutions and implement them according to the actual conditions of villages. When setting up the content and form of village regulations, it should not only combine with the current background but also conform to the local customs and the actual needs of farmers. Moreover, the implementation of the informal institutions must fully respect the wishes of farmers so that they become important participants in the formulation of the institution. Second, the rural committee should encourage village cadres and farmers to move from alienation to closeness and cultivate a tight CMR. Village cadres can be deeply involved in the daily lives of villagers to seek advice, information about their needs, and comments for administration from the farmers and narrow the psychological gap between farmers and the institution. At the same time, the construction of an online and offline interaction platform between cadres and the masses can help village cadres understand public opinion faster and realize effective governance of the rural environment under the background of village labor outflow. Third, the implementation of the village institutions should pay attention to the timeliness of institutions. In the initial period when farmers’ participation in RRE is limited, it is necessary to give full play to the promoting role of various institutions. In the middle stage of RRE, the government should focus on strengthening the constraining position of disciplinary supervision regulations on farmers. Farmers’ engagement is stronger in the later stages; therefore, the government must fully utilize the benefits of value-oriented and transmission internalization mechanisms to promote farmers’ ongoing participation.