Impact Mechanism of the Three Pilot Reforms of the Rural Land System on Rural Residential Land Use Transition: A Regime Shifts Perspective

Understanding the impact of the three pilot reforms of the rural land system (TRRLS) on rural residential land use transition (RRLUT) based on the land use transition (LUT) theory is crucial for promoting rural land system reform. However, there is still a lack of research on this, and the LUT theory also needs to be improved from a systematic perspective to eliminate the misunderstanding of LUT in academia. To address this, this study firstly attempts to deepen the conceptual model and the understanding of characteristics of LUT from a regime shifts perspective. LUT is the transformation of the land use system as one regime passes into another, where a difference in the analytical perspective of land use morphology generates different transition results. The process of LUT can simultaneously or solely involve dominant morphology and recessive morphology transitions, and there are two types of LUT: positive and negative transitions. Moreover, LUT in different regions may have pathway differences and the convergence of results. Then, a theoretical analysis framework of the pathways of RRLUT under the TRRLS is constructed to detect the impact mechanism by using Wujin district, China to obtain empirical evidence. The results reveal that the recessive morphology transition of rural residential land in Wujin under the TRRLS is significant, while the dominant morphology transition in land quantity structure and spatial distribution is relatively slow. Furthermore, two internal factors of population urbanization and migration, the demand for rural collective economic development, as well as the two external factors of the TRRLS and market factors, such as nonlocals’ demand for housing and rural enterprises’ demand for land, have, to a certain extent, weakened the resilience of the rural land use system and promoted RRLUT. Here, the TRRLS have, by removing the institutional barrier to RRLUT, become the key to the transition.