Rural non-agricultural differences and their driving forces at the county level:A case study of 16 villages in Yishui, Shandong, East China

In the rapid process of industrialization and urbanization, non-agriculturalization has become one important tendency of Chinese rural evolution, which at the same time indicates obvious spatial heterogeneity. The participatory rural appraisal is employed, which involves 16 typical villages of Yishui County in Shandong Province, to explore the rural non- agricultural differences and its driving factors. In terms of regional differentiation, the livelihood activities of rural households were divided into four types: non- agricultural employment outside the county, non-agricultural employment inside the county, part-time non-agricultural employment inside the county and agricultural production. Then, we quantified the non-agricultural level by estimating the proportion of rural non- agricultural labor, non- agricultural income and nonagricultural time in 2013. On the basis of this estimation, we discussed the spatial differences and driving forces of rural non- agriculturalization in the study area. The results showed that,(1) Non- agricultural level of the villages was between 37.54% and 90.65%, which indicated that non- agriculturalization was a common phenomenon in traditional agricultural regions.Suburban independent non- agricultural villages developed their own industries, while rural households of other villages were employed in non-agricultural industries outside their villages.It is indicated that the study area was underdeveloped in non- agricultural economy.(2)Suburban villages hold the highest non- agricultural level. Food crops dominated villages showed higher level of non-agriculturalization in the regions near town, while economic crops dominated villages showed lower level of non-agriculturalization. In the same geomorphologic region, food crops dominated villages showed higher level of non- agriculturization than economic crops dominated villages. Spatial differentiation of rural non- agriculturalization was remarkable in traditional agricultural regions at the county scale.(3) As the distances to town became shorter, there was a decline in the proportion of non- agricultural employment outside the county(labor, income, and time), and that inside the county was on the rise, and the proportion of part-time non-agricultural employment inside the county showed an inverted U-shaped pattern.(4) The driving mechanism showed that economic diffusing efficiency and the regional accessibility were both deeply influencing employment structure of rural labors, which kept the suburban villages at the highest non- agricultural level. Agricultural income and the demand for labor made non-agricultural level of food crops dominated villages higher than that of economic crops dominated villages. As the distances to town became shorter, owing to economic diffusing efficiency and agricultural income increase, food crops dominated villages showed higher level of non- agriculturalization while economic crops dominated villages showed lower level. Non- agricultural differentiation is an important development trend of traditional agricultural regions in East China. Therefore, the authors suggest that the governments should take concrete measures on rural development management that keep consistent with non-agricultural characteristics and its driving mechanism of different villages.