Effect of Village Informal Institutions and Cadre-Mass Relationship for Farmers’ Participation in Rural Residential Environment Governance in China

Rural residential environment governance (RRE), as the first tough battle of China’s rural revitalization strategy, relies on farmers’ participation since farmers are the main laborers, builders, and administrators in environmental governance. However, lackluster farmers’ enthusiasm and initiative have hindered RRE initiatives, prompting this paper. 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 through the entropy method, ols, and quantile regression model. The empirical results indicate that informal institutions promoted farmers’ participation through three mechanisms, with disciplinary supervision impact being the most significant and value-oriented next, but transmission internalization doesn’t work as well as it should. Meanwhile, for farmers with varying degrees of participation, there is a general difference in the governance effect of informal institutions. Furthermore, the close cadre-mass relationship significantly strengthened disciplinary supervision and transmission internalization effects to mobilize farmers’ participation. Therefore, the village committee should implement diverse informal institutions based on the actual situation of their village. Moreover, it is necessary to shape a close cadre-mass relationship to improve the accuracy of institutions’ implementation.