Research ArticleSelecting Rural Development Paths Based on VillageMultifunction A Case of Jingjiang City China

Tianqi He 12 Weifeng Qiao 123 Kaiyang Jia 12 Yibei Chai12 Yi Hu12 Pan Sun1

Yahua Wang12 and Ting Feng12

1School of Geography Nanjing Normal University Nanjing 210023 China2College of Rural Vitalization Nanjing Normal University Nanjing 210023 China3Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information ResourceDevelopment and Application Nanjing 210023 China

Correspondence should be addressed to Weifeng Qiao qiaoweifengnjnueducn and Kaiyang Jia jiakaiyang96163com

Received 27 June 2020 Revised 2 September 2020 Accepted 15 October 2020 Published 31 October 2020

Academic Editor Qingdu Li

Copyright copy 2020 Tianqi He et al 3is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licensewhich permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited

3e diverse value of rural areas has been gradually highlighted and promoting the sustainable development of rural areas with thetheoretical guidance of rural multifunction is the key to realizing rural revitalization 3is study defined the concept of ruralmultifunction from the perspective of residentrsquos demands and divided it into five main functions including rural agriculturalproduction nonagricultural production living ecological environment and social security By constructing the evaluation indexsystem of rural multifunction we analysed the spatial distribution characteristics of 160 villages of Jingjiang in Jiangsu ProvinceAnd functional combinations were identified to select targeted rural development paths oriented by balanced development ofrural multifunction3e results showed the following (1)3e development of various rural functions in Jingjiang city was unevenand agricultural production function still dominated (2) 3e villages with strong agricultural production function were mainlyconcentrated in the northwest while the villages with a high level of nonagricultural production function were mostly distributedin the industrial parks or around towns 3ere is still much room for improvement in social security function especially in areasdominated by nonagricultural production Nonagricultural production function had a negative effect on the ecological envi-ronment function which is contrary to the agricultural production function (3) Balanced development rather than equaldevelopment of rural functions should be pursued to achieve multifunctionality Scientific guidance for the functional growth ofvillages in Jingjiang city and theoretical support for the microscale evaluation of rural multifunction and its application wereprovided by the research results

1 Introduction

3e traditional rural areas are a complex system composedof the economy society and environment and it is a humanliving space dominated by agricultural production How-ever rural areas are being pushed forward by the market-ization brought by rapid industrialization and urbanization[1 2] At the same time the improvement of the level ofsocial and economic development and the enrichment of thedemand level of humans have prompted the diversificationof activities that humans use to meet their own needs [3]which leads to a continuous increase in the types of rural

functions that support human activities 3e rural space isundergoing a dramatic reconstruction [4] and rural func-tions are changing accordingly especially in China

From 1978 to 2018 the urbanization rate of Chinarsquospermanent population gradually increased from 1792 to5958 [5 6] It is expected to enter a mature period by 2035and rural transformation and development will also enter acritical period [7] By the end of 2018 Chinarsquos rural pop-ulation still accounted for 40 percent [8] In 2020 the ruralrevitalization strategy which was a major decision anddeployment implemented by the 19th National Congress ofthe Communist Party of China was further emphasized in

HindawiComplexityVolume 2020 Article ID 7590942 15 pageshttpsdoiorg10115520207590942

Central Document No 1 Rural revitalization and trans-formation and paired rural-urban development can besupported theoretically by the multifunctional theory ofrural areas [9 10] namely strengthening the research onrural multifunction and perfecting rural multifunctionaltheory are of great significance for optimizing the functionalpattern and realizing rural revival in the new era Under thistrend rural multifunction and its application have become awidely discussed topic in academia

Since the 20th century scholars have conducted ex-tensive research on the types and distributions of ruralfunctions At the beginning of the 21st century scholarsgradually began to use multifunctional theory to replace theframework of ldquopostproductivismrdquo to explain a series ofchanges in rural areas 3e principle for selecting the in-dicators for measuring rural multifunction was discussed[11ndash13] and then a wider range of versatile applications wasfurther proposed [14 15] During this period the multi-functional theory was also widely used in rural developmentpolicies [16] 3e early research mainly focused on quali-tative analysis In recent years research on rural multi-function tends to be empirical Although the existingresearch has strengthened the theoretical and practicalfoundations of research on multifunction the related re-search is still somewhat weak compared with that onmultifunctional agriculture and urban multifunction [17]

For the study of rural multifunction the spatial het-erogeneity can be more reflected from the village level andthere is a more practical significance for exploring ruraldevelopment [18 19] However there are still few studiesconducted at the village level Of the few studies that havebeen made most were mainly based on the data processedaccording to the proportion of population or land areawhich is not scientific enough Many scholars have exploredthe multifunctionality of the rural areas from the perspectiveof farmers while others from the perspective of land [17 19]More studies are needed on general rural areas with uni-versal significance rather than typical areas such as suburbanareas [13] and ldquovillages within citiesrdquo Moreover the statusquo evolution process and influence factors for ruralmultifunction have received extensive attention fromscholars [20ndash22] Limited attention has been paid to thefuture development of rural multifunction More efforts areneeded to describe the characteristics of rural multifunctionwith a systematic quantitative evaluation method on villages

In response taking Jingjiang as the case area thisstudy constructs the index system from three aspects ofresidents land and industry and puts forward themethod of locating dominant function and inferiorfunction to systematically study the spatial differentiationfor rural multifunction based on villages 3e purpose ofthis article is to answer the questions lsquowhat is the generaldefinition of rural multifunction How should ruralmultifunction develop in the futurersquo 3e research resultsare expected to provide feasible guidance for future ruralrevitalization practices and urban-rural integration formany rural areas especially developing nations andpromote the further microscale evaluation and applica-tion of the multifunctionality of rural areas

3e remainder of this paper is structured as followsSection 2 presents a brief review of the literature and in-troduction to rural multifunction Section 3 illustrates thedata source and empirical methods used Section 4 reportsthe empirical results and brief analysis Section 5 containsthe discussion and prospects for future research and somebrief conclusion are drawn in Section 6

2 Literature Review

Multifunctional agriculture (MFA) refers to the fact thatagriculture not only has the basic function of producing foodand fibre but also has several other functions such as themanagement of renewable natural resources landscapeconservation of biodiversity and contribution to the socio-economic viability of rural areas [23] MFA was originallyproposed by the Japanese government to protect its ricemarket in the late 1980s 3e combination of human socialactivities and the nature of agricultural production formsagricultural multifunctionality 3e agricultural productionactivities carried out by humans in rural areas cannot exist inisolation from other social activities 3e EU and otherdeveloped agricultural regions began to attach importance tothe understanding of agricultural multifunctionality afterthe relative surplus of agricultural production reached itspeak [24] By the late 1990s the concept of MFA has beenwidely accepted With the maturity of agricultural multi-function theory and the proposal of sustainable develop-ment the multifunctional theory has gradually expandedfrom the agricultural field to other areas such as territorialmultifunction [25 26] 3e territorial function is thecombined functionality of specific regions in the sustainabledevelopment of natural ecosystems and activities for humanproduction and life [27 28] including urban territorialfunction and rural territorial function Wilson pointed outthat multifunctional theory can be used not only in agri-culture but also in rural transformation and developmentespecially in describing the population industry environ-ment of rural areas and thought that the theory of ruralmultifunction is feasible in less developed countries or re-gions [29] 3e theory of rural multifunction is an extensionof MFA [30 31] and the result of further refinement of thetheory of territorial function providing a complete ana-lytical framework for the research of rural functions andtheir diversification

Rural space with natural characteristics territorialityand functional complexities is a unity of production ecol-ogy and living space 3e function is one of the importantattributes of rural space Actually rural itself is a regionspace with multifunctionality that has been neglected in thepast [32] From the perspective of multifunction the het-erogeneity of rural space can be well characterized [33]3ere is no unified definition for rural multifunction amongscholars It is stated that rural multifunction refers to thecomprehensive characteristics of a village that play a ben-eficial role in nature or human development by exertingtheir attributes and joint effects with other systems from theperspective of the connection between rural areas and thesurrounding region [34] 3e European declaration on rural

2 Complexity

development in the 21st century stated that the contem-porary countryside is not only composed of traditionalagricultural production sites and farmer gathering places butalso has multiple functions such as economic societalcultural and ecological functions 3is set of functions isirreplaceable for the overall development and is coordinatedand complementary with urban territorial function [35]

Scholars also have different classification of rural mul-tifunction Ma et al divided rural functions into the livingproductive and ecological functions [36] Yang et al utilizedgeographical detectors to explore the rural multifunction oncounties in China from the functions of economic devel-opment agricultural production ecological conservationand social security and find that rural multifunction inChinarsquos plains and eastern coastal areas were more obviousthan those in plateaus and mountains and the overall ruralmultifunctionality was showing an upward trend [37] Toobjectively understand the rural multifunction and itsevolution mechanism different spatial analysis approacheshave been used Zhao et al used the kernel density esti-mation to reveal the spatial differentiation and pointed outthat the function of rural homestead originates from theneeds of farmers [38] 3e local spatial autocorrelationmodels [39] and BP neural network models [40] as well asthe Spearman ranking correlation coefficient method [41]were also applied to related studies Xu and Fang provided ascientific reference for promoting the future developmentand transformation of rural areas based on functional statusand function division [41] Effective rural developmentpolicies must be based on accurate classification of the es-sential characteristics of the regional types [24] so thescientific cognition for rural multifunction is particularlyimportant At the same time rural multifunction researchon villages is needed to provide a significant reference forvillage planning And what principles should be followed todevelop the rural function and how to develop is worthfurther exploring

3 Scientific Cognition and the BalancedDevelopment of Rural Multifunction

31 Scientific Cognition of Rural Multifunction Holmes andArgent indicated that changes in peoplersquos demand forproduction consumption and ecology are the main reasondriving the continuous transformation of rural functions inthe process of social development [42] In traditional ag-ricultural society in China the change of demand can becharacterized by the increase in demand In this period cityand rural are two relatively closed system and the ruralresidents lived a self-sufficient life 3e subject of demandwas mainly rural residents who earn their living from ag-riculture 3erefore rural areas as the space carrier to meetthe needs of rural dwellers have the function of agriculturalproduction and living

In the industrial society the demand hierarchy has beenenriched As the man-land relationship became increasinglytense agriculture was facing the problem of ldquoover densifi-cationrdquo and traditional Chinese agricultural developmentmodels that have long relied on high labor input to increase

land yield are declining while modern agricultural devel-opment models that increase labor productivity areemerging A large number of agricultural labor was in thestate of recessive unemployment which led to the transfer ofrural surplus labor to nonagricultural industries [43] 3enonagricultural production function of the countrysideappeared

When it comes to the postindustrial society demandsubject presents the trend of diversification (including ruraland urban residents) and peoplersquos desire for consumptionbegins to transform into nonmaterial products 3e middle-income groups mainly concentrated in cities with higherincome levels and scientific and cultural qualities graduallyprogress to a ldquogreenrdquo consensus driving the formation ofecological consumption trends [31 44] 3e functions un-dertaken by villages in terms of ecology have graduallybecome prominent Simultaneously with the increase inpeoplersquos income peoplersquos requirements for the quality of lifeare improving People are beginning to pay attention to thesocial security system 3e government is also committed tostrengthening social security functions in rural areas

3ereupon this study defines rural multifunction as thesum of various functions provided by rural areas as a carrierfor implementing human activities to meet the diverse needsof residents at a certain stage of socio-economic develop-ment and these functions rely on the resource character-istics of the rural space Rural multifunction can be dividedinto agricultural production function (APF) nonagricul-tural production function (NPF) living function (LF)ecological environmental function (EEF) and social securityfunction (SSF) And rural multifunction which is rooted inthe suitability for the land for multiple uses as is agriculturalmultifunction is an inherent attribute of rural areas Ruralmultifunction has obvious spatial heterogeneity and tem-poral variability (see Figure 1)

32 Balanced Development of Rural MultifunctionAgriculture rural areas and development have alwaysbeen crucial issues for international organizations Oneof the essential features of rural development is to achievemultifunctionalization [45] Firstly comprehensivenessand diversity are the basic features of rural multifunction(see Figure 1) Rural value is the result of the compre-hensive action of various functions 3e diversification ofresidentsrsquo spatial needs determines the simultaneousdevelopment of rural multiple functions that is it isunreasonable to develop one function at the expense ofothers In addition the combination of elements andstructural conditions of the rural area determine theattributes and strength of rural functions and restrict thedirection and trend of the rural multifunction evolution[46] Different regions differ in the combination of ele-ments and characteristics of resources [47] 3ereforerural multifunction cannot achieve equal development3is inequality is manifested in two aspects one is theunequal development of a certain function in differentregions and the other is the unequal development ofvarious functions in the same region

Complexity 3

With that in mind we proposed the concept of thebalanced development of rural multifunction which isdifferent from the equal development of all functionsBalanced development of rural multifunction in this paperrefers to the relative synchronization in the development offunctions whether among functions or among regionswhich is basically kept under the limitation of elementcombination and structure Multifunctional balanced de-velopment not only emphasizes the balanced developmentwith the distinction between functions but also advocates thebalanced development of various rural areas Most functionsare not at their best for some factors and there is still muchroom for improvement Besides there are interactions be-tween rural functions For example in general the non-agricultural production function is negatively related toagricultural production function and ecological environ-mental function [24 48] Some functions were even gonebeyond the limits allowed by the ecological environmentthus causing negative effects on it (see Figure 2) 3e se-lection of rural development paths should be guided by thebalanced development of rural multifunction

4 Materials and Methods

41 Survey of the Research Area Jingjiang city which islocated in eastern China is located between Nanjing city andShanghai city (see Figure 3) and is included in both theShanghai and Nanjing metropolitan areas Jingjiang has atotal land area of 65558 square kilometres 3e terrain ofJingjiang is mostly flat with few hills As the bridgehead forthe economic integration of northern Jiangsu and southernJiangsu it has a coastline of 523 kilometres along theYangtze River and belongs to the Yangtze River EconomicZone 3e economic development level in Jingjiang city isrelatively high At the end of 2017 its rural permanent

population was 236800 and the urbanization rate of thepermanent population was 6555 3e per capita dispos-able income of rural residents is 21361 yuan and theproportion of the primary secondary and tertiary industriesin the GDP is 25 486 489 Since the removal of the countyand the establishment of the city in 1993 the urbanizationprocess of Jingjiang city has been accelerating Since 2004 ithas accelerated the construction of a ldquofive horizontal andthree verticalrdquo road network to create a new spatial pattern ofldquotwo core areas three axes and four zonesrdquo3e scope of themain city zone is gradually expanding and the rural areashave been driven to gradually show a multifunctional de-velopment trend3erefore choosing Jingjiang as the case isrepresentative

Taking the end of 2017 as the time node this studyselected 160 administrative villages in Jingjiang city as theresearch units 3e relevant data mainly include the socio-economic data and land use status data of 160 administrativevillages Among them the socio-economic statistical datacame from the ldquoJingjiang Statistical Yearbookrdquo (2018) andother relevant departments and the land use data came fromthe land use change survey data of Jingjiang city in 2017Since the collective construction land area in 2017 of someadministrative villages could not be obtained the 2018 datawere used instead

42 Research Method

421 Construction of a Rural Multifunction Index SystemAccording to the scientific cognition of rural multifunctionthis study measured rural multifunction from the fivefunctions of agricultural production (APF) nonagriculturalproduction (NPF) living (LF) ecological environmental(EEF) and social security (SSF) respectively Moreover the

Residentsrsquodemand

diversification

Internal factor

Resource characteristics

External factor

Feature

Driving force

Type

offu

ctio

n

Source

Rural multifuction

Agricultural ProductionNonagricultural production

Ecological environmentSocial security

Living

Theoretical basis

Other social activities

Agricultural production activities

DiversityComprehensiveness

InteractivitySpatial heterogeneityTemporal variability

Postindustrial society

Industrial society

Traditional agricultural society

IndustrializationUrbanization

InformatizationGlobalization

Promote

Multifunctional agriculture

Material basis

Rely on

InteractProduction

Consumption

Ecology

Figure 1 Scientific cognition of rural multifunction

4 Complexity

countryside is an extremely complex system [49] Demo-graphic characteristics are the most important and activefactor reflecting changes in rural development 3e foun-dation of rural revitalization is industrial prosperity andindustrial development is the basic indicator to measurerural development And land use is the external represen-tation of changes in rural spatial function structure [50] Sowe selected 16 indicators from three dimensions of peopleland and production for comprehensive evaluation (seeTable 1)

422 Calculation of Function Index 3e accuracy of theevaluation results is directly affected by the chosen stan-dardization method Compared with other methods the z-score method is more effective [53] and is immune to theeffects of the original unit of measurement It can convertdata of different magnitudes into a unified score for com-parison and can be subjected to further statistical processing3erefore the z-score method was adopted for de-dimen-sioning and then a linear transformation was performed tofacilitate comparison 3e minimum relative informationentropy was used to couple the objective weights andsubjective weights [54] 3e comprehensive weights wereobtained with the Lagrange multiplier method Weightedsummation was used to obtain the functional index of eachfunction 3e calculation process is as follows

(1) Dimensionless processing

Zij Xij minus μj

σj

(1)

where Xij is the original data value of the jth index ofthe ith unit μj represents the mean σj represents thestandard deviation and Zij represents the dimen-sionless z-score

(2) Weight calculation with the entropy method

Xijprime

Xij minus min Xj1113872 1113873

max Xj1113872 1113873 minus min Xj1113872 1113873

Yij Xijprime

1113936mi1 Xijprime

ej minusk 1113944m

i1Yij times lnYij1113872 1113873

dj 1 minus ej

Wj dj

1113936nj1 dj

(2)

where Xijprime represents the standardized value of the

evaluation index min(Xj) and max(Xj) are theminimum and maximum values of the jth indicatorrespectively and Wj is the weight (k 1lnmm 160)

(3) Calculation of the comprehensive weight with theminimum relative information entropy

Wj waj times wbj1113872 1113873

05

1113936mj1 waj times wbj1113872 1113873

05 (3)

where Waj and Wbj are the weights calculated by theentropy method and analytic hierarchy processrespectively and Wj is the comprehensive weight

(4) Calculation of index value for rural functions

SSF

EEF

NPFLF

APF

Combination of elementsand structural conditions

Multifunctional development

(a)

SSF

EEF

NPFLF

APF

Combination of elementsand structural conditions

Multifunctional development

(b)

Figure 2 Balanced development of rural multifunction (a) imbalanced development and (b) balanced development

Complexity 5

S Wj times Zij (4)

where S is the index value of the rural functions

423 Identification for Dominant Functions and InferiorFunctions 3e identification of functional types contributesto refined governance of rural areas and rational land usethereby enhancing the value of rural spatial functions [51]In this study the index values of each function werecompared with the sum of the mean and standard deviationof the corresponding function Combined with the char-acteristics of the collected data the judgement rule in Table 2was used to identify the dominant function and the inferiorfunctionswhere Sa is the index value of function a of the

unit Va is the average value of function a of all units and σa

is the standard deviation of function a of all units

5 Results

According to the above method the index values of theagricultural production nonagricultural production livingecological environmental and social security functions ofeach administrative village were calculated A scatter plotwas used for statistical analysis (see Figure 4) And ArcGIS100 software and the natural breaks method were also usedto divide each function into 5 levels higher high mediumlow and lower (see Figure 5)

In Figure 4 the horizontal axis is 160 administrativevillages sorted according to the variance of the index valuesand the vertical axis indicates the strength of the functions ofeach administrative village In general the agricultural

Xilai town

Jishi town

Xieqiao town

Xilai town

Gushan town

Jingcheng town

Shengci town

Dongxing town

Maqiao town

Xinqiao town

Yangtze

River

Wuxi city

Suzhou city

Taixing city

Nantong city

Huanghai Sea

Shandong Province

AnhuiProvince

Shanghai city

Zhejiang Province

Yangtze river

Study areaTown areaNo data area

HighwayRailway

0 5km

Nantong

Suzhou

Yancheng

LianyungangXuzhou

SuqianHuaian

Yangzhou

Nanjing

Changzhou

Taizhou

Zhenjiang

Wuxi

Jiangying bridge

Municipal boundaryCounty boundaryTown boundary

N

Figure 3 Location of the study region

6 Complexity

production function of rural areas in Jingjiang city wasslightly stronger than the nonagricultural productionfunction indicating that agriculture still occupied a domi-nant position And the living function was stronger than thesocial security function From the comparison between thefirst 40 villages and the last 40 villages it can be seen that

there were striking differences in the functional index valuesbetween villages that is different functions of the samevillage had significant gaps In particular there were largedifferences between the social security function and theecological environmental function which had the charac-teristic of polarization

51 Features of Spatial Differentiation of Rural Multifunction

511 Agricultural Production Function Overall the spatialdistribution of rural agricultural production function inJingjiang city has a significant variation (see Figure 5) It hada high degree of agglomeration and the strength of thisfunction showed a more obvious step distribution in thewestern region gradually decreasing from north to south3e higher-value and high-value areas of agricultural pro-duction function included 53 administrative villages con-centrated in Shengci town Maqiao town and Gushan townShengci town and Maqiao town are rich in high-qualitycultivated land and have superior water and soil resourcesAs the main development areas for the planting industry inthe city they concentrated on developing highly efficientagriculture Gushan town which has a flat terrain has goodagricultural production conditions 3ere are 60

Table 1 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Criterionlayer Indicator layer Connotation and calculation method of index Effect Weight

APF

Grain planting area 3e important indicator characterizing grain production capacity + 026913e proportion of agricultural

employees Agricultural employeestotal number of employees + 03775

Usable irrigation ponds andreservoirs Number of irrigation ponds and reservoirs available in the village + 01578

3e proportion of cultivated land Cultivated land areatotal land area + 01956

NPF

3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployees Degree of employed nonagriculture + 03903

Number of individual businesshouseholds

Number of individual industrial and commercial households in thevillage + 02272

Area of collective operatingconstruction land

Refers to the rural construction land with the nature of productionand management + 01983

3e proportion of land for mining Mining land areatotal land area + 01842

LF

Sanitation security Number of households with sanitary toilets + 02263

Tap water security Number of households with tap waternumber of the residentpopulation + 02356

Proportion of homestead Homestead areatotal land area + 05381

EEF Forest coverage Forestland areatotal land area [51] + 06825Ecosystem service value Refer to the research of Zhao et al [52] for calculation + 03175

SSF

Participation in medical insurance Number of participants in cooperative medical insurancenumber ofregistered permanent resident + 03003

Participation in social pensionplans

Number of participants in social pension plansnumber of registeredpermanent resident + 03155

Per capita library collection Library collectionnumber of the resident population + 03842

Table 2 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Condition Result(Sa(Va + σa))ge 08 Function a is the dominant function of the unit08gt (Sa(Va + σa))ge 05 Function a is the nondominant function of the unit05gt (Sa(Va + σa)) Function a is the inferior function of the unit

0010203040506070809

1

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

APFNPFLF

EEFSSF

Figure 4 Index value of rural multifunction in Jingjiang city in2017

Complexity 7

administrative villages in the lower-value and low-valueareas which are mainly located around urban areas Withthe advancement of urbanization this kind of area is affectedby urban radiation and has a high degree of land use de-velopment a shrinking proportion of cultivated land and adiminishing capacity to attract and absorb agriculturalworkers resulting in a weak agricultural productionfunction

512 Nonagricultural Production Function 3e nonagri-cultural production function of the city presented evidentspatial agglomeration characteristics which is generallyopposite to the agricultural production function 3e 51administrative villages with high levels of this function weremainly distributed in Xinqiao town Dongxing town andJingcheng town along the river indicating that the YangtzeRiver Economic Zone cities and towns were obvious drivers

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(a)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(b)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(c)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(d)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(e)

Figure 5 Spatial distribution of the rural function indexes in Jingjiang city in 2017 (a) APF (b) NPF (c) LF (d) EEF and (e) SSF

8 Complexity

for nonagricultural production Located in the southwest ofJingjiang city north of the Yangtze River Xinqiao town andDongxing town are the main deployment areas of the in-dustrial parks Xinqiao town is adjacent to the GuangjingExpressway and Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge in the eastDongxing town is an urban expansion area adjacent to theurban area As the seat of the main urban area Jingchengtown has Jiangyin Bridge which connects the area to Wuxicity 3is type of area which has convenient transportationis the main development area along the river and the mainconduit of industrial transfer in southern Jiangsu and it hada high proportion of secondary and tertiary industries and ahigh index value for the nonagricultural production func-tion 3e low-value and lower-value areas were mainlyconcentrated in the northwest with a total of 63 adminis-trative villages Such areas were less affected by urban ra-diation and the Yangtze River Economic Zone and they hadno economic or geographic conditions conducive to in-dustrial development 3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployment in these areas was relatively small leading to alow index value for the nonagricultural production function

513 Living Function Figure 5 shows that the index value ofthe living function in the city was not high 3e 31 ad-ministrative villages with higher index values were mainlyconcentrated around urban areas such as Jingcheng townXieqiao town and Xinqiao town 3ese villages have closeurban-rural links convenient transportation complete in-frastructure and public facilities a large number of em-ployment opportunities and convenient commutingmaking them the preferred residence for most residents 3espatial distribution of the villages with low index values ofthe living function was scattered 3ese 74 administrativevillages were mainly distributed in Maqiao town Gushantown Dongxing town and Xilai town Areas that are faraway from cities and towns have imperfect road systems andservice facilities and low index values of living functions

514 Ecological Environmental Function 3e ecologicalenvironmental function for most villages in the city wasweak 3e higher-value areas of this function were dis-tributed in areas with a strong agricultural productionfunction and the areas that were far from the urban mainlyincluding Shengci town Maqiao town Gushan town andDongxing town Among them Maqiao town and Gushantown are regarded as the important areas of ecologicalfunction Dongxing town which is the largest Cuiguan pearplanting base in Jingjiang has a well-developed plantingindustry 3e land development intensity in this type of areawas relatively low and the contribution to ecosystemconservation was high Jingjiang city mainly realized thecoordinated development of the whole cityrsquos economy andsociety through the economic growth point (urban area) andaxis (industrial zone along the river) Many types of landwith high ecosystem service value have been developed forregional economic industrial and commercial develop-ment At the same time Jingjiang as a port industrial cityhas vigorously promoted development along the river and

joint development across the river As a result the ecologicalenvironment has been destroyed 3erefore the 90 ad-ministrative villages with low index values of ecologicalenvironmental function were distributed in the industrialareas close to the urban area and along the river

515 Social Security Function 3e villages with high indexvalues of social security function were mainly located in theperiphery of towns and areas with a stronger agriculturalproduction function and their distribution was slightlyscattered Among them there were 11 administrative vil-lages in the higher-value area and 44 in the high-value areaIn this type villages with strong agricultural productionfunctions that rely on local agriculture for development hadrelatively complete social service systems such as health careand pensions Villages adjacent to the urban area can alsorely on the urban social service system due to the closeurban-rural connection 3e 55 administrative villages withweak social security functions were mainly located in theindustrial parks of Xinqiao town and Gushan town Due tothe vigorous development of industry in these regions theyhave employed a substantial number of nonindigenouspeople resulting in a low level of average social services anda low index value for the social security function

52 Recognition of Functional Combinations 3e dominantfunctions and the inferior functions were identified by themethod mentioned above And if there were multiple ad-vantageous functions the strongest function was selectedConversely if there are multiple inferior functions thefunction with the lowest index value was selected If therewas a situation where there were 4 or 5 dominant functionsthe area was determined to ldquointegrated developmentrdquo 3erest were named according to the form of ldquodominantfunctions-inferior functionsrdquo Among them because ldquoAPF-oriented-NPF-laggedrdquo and ldquoNPF-oriented-APF-laggedrdquowere separately distributed in the northwest and southwestother inferior functions were identified as alternatives tomaintain the effectiveness of the type identification Con-sidering the necessity of the coordinated development ofsocial security and the living functions the ldquoEEF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-ented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo typeswere merged Ultimately 17 types of functional combina-tions were identified to place emphasis on highlighting thefunctional characteristics of each unit and obtain a com-prehensive multifunctional pattern of rural areas in Jingjiangcity (see Figure 6)

6 Discussion

61 Targeted Rural Development Paths Oriented by BalancedDevelopment 3e types of rural multifunction combina-tions reflect the current development level of functions ineach village 3ereupon the identification of rural multi-function combinations can serve to locate the village ac-curately [49] and to find strengths and weaknesses Based onthe principle of balanced development for rural

Complexity 9

multifunction this study analysed the identified multi-function combinations and divided the future developmentof rural areas into 5 types according to the number andcombination of dominant functions and inferior function inthe villages Corresponding development paths were pro-posed at the same time (see Table 3) Concretely we clas-sified villages with 4-5 dominant functions as the ldquointegrateddevelopmentrdquo those without inferior functions as ldquodomi-nant function breakthroughrdquo and those with both dominantand inferior functions as ldquoinferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo And if the villages had nodominant function but inferior functions they were clas-sified as ldquoinferior function enhancementrdquo3e villages whichhad no dominant function and their combination of ele-ments and resource characteristics cannot well support thedevelopment of the weakest functions were judged to beldquotransfer developmentrdquo Targeted rural development pathscan promote the scientific development of different villagesand in turn enhance the multifunctionality for villages

611 Integrated Development Areas with integrated de-velopment have no weak function and various ruralfunctions are relatively well-developed and balanced 3eseareas not only have natural resource endowments but alsocertain geographical advantages3erefore on the one handthis type of village should pursue the integrated developmentof agricultural and nonagricultural industries and reform theorganic structure of the rural industries On the other hand

based on the sound development of functions they shouldpay close attention to the quality of development to proceedtowards sustainable development 3e governance and errorcorrection mechanisms for the territorial space of theYangtze River Economic Zone established by Jingjiang cityproposed the concept of the Yangtze River coast and itssurrounding 5 kilometres Villages within 5 kilometres of theYangtze River coast and its periphery can place a moderateemphasis on industrial development

612 Dominant Function Breakthrough 3is type whichhas no undeveloped function is outstanding in a certainfunction In the future great attention should be paid tooptimizing the leading functions by this kind of villageldquoAPF-orientedrdquo villages are supposed to enhance the qualityof cultivated land for yield assurance And actively pro-moting rural land circulation to develop efficient large-scaleand modern agriculture is also an appropriate way Besidesthis type should take the endogenous development path suchas utilizing agricultural resources with outstanding localcomparative advantages to develop high-quality and char-acteristic products and services and to build personalizedand branded agriculture 3e construction of the bases forspecial agricultural and secondary products and the bases fortourism and leisure would also be an effective direction 3eldquoNPF-orientedrdquo villages were mainly distributed in thesouthwest of Jingjiang and have convenient water and landtransportation Among them the villages along the Yangtze

APF lagged

SSF lagged

EEF lagged

LF lagged

0 5km

Townno data

Town boundary

Yangtze riverAPF oriented-SSF lagged

APF oriented-EEF lagged

APF oriented

LF oriented

LF oriented-SSF lagged

EEF oriented

SSF oriented

SSF oriented-EEF lagged

SSF oriented-LF lagged

Integrated development

NPF oriented

NPF oriented-EEF lagged

NPF oriented-SSF lagged

Yangtze

River

N

Figure 6 Types of the rural multifunction combinations

10 Complexity

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

development in the 21st century stated that the contem-porary countryside is not only composed of traditionalagricultural production sites and farmer gathering places butalso has multiple functions such as economic societalcultural and ecological functions 3is set of functions isirreplaceable for the overall development and is coordinatedand complementary with urban territorial function [35]

Scholars also have different classification of rural mul-tifunction Ma et al divided rural functions into the livingproductive and ecological functions [36] Yang et al utilizedgeographical detectors to explore the rural multifunction oncounties in China from the functions of economic devel-opment agricultural production ecological conservationand social security and find that rural multifunction inChinarsquos plains and eastern coastal areas were more obviousthan those in plateaus and mountains and the overall ruralmultifunctionality was showing an upward trend [37] Toobjectively understand the rural multifunction and itsevolution mechanism different spatial analysis approacheshave been used Zhao et al used the kernel density esti-mation to reveal the spatial differentiation and pointed outthat the function of rural homestead originates from theneeds of farmers [38] 3e local spatial autocorrelationmodels [39] and BP neural network models [40] as well asthe Spearman ranking correlation coefficient method [41]were also applied to related studies Xu and Fang provided ascientific reference for promoting the future developmentand transformation of rural areas based on functional statusand function division [41] Effective rural developmentpolicies must be based on accurate classification of the es-sential characteristics of the regional types [24] so thescientific cognition for rural multifunction is particularlyimportant At the same time rural multifunction researchon villages is needed to provide a significant reference forvillage planning And what principles should be followed todevelop the rural function and how to develop is worthfurther exploring

3 Scientific Cognition and the BalancedDevelopment of Rural Multifunction

31 Scientific Cognition of Rural Multifunction Holmes andArgent indicated that changes in peoplersquos demand forproduction consumption and ecology are the main reasondriving the continuous transformation of rural functions inthe process of social development [42] In traditional ag-ricultural society in China the change of demand can becharacterized by the increase in demand In this period cityand rural are two relatively closed system and the ruralresidents lived a self-sufficient life 3e subject of demandwas mainly rural residents who earn their living from ag-riculture 3erefore rural areas as the space carrier to meetthe needs of rural dwellers have the function of agriculturalproduction and living

In the industrial society the demand hierarchy has beenenriched As the man-land relationship became increasinglytense agriculture was facing the problem of ldquoover densifi-cationrdquo and traditional Chinese agricultural developmentmodels that have long relied on high labor input to increase

land yield are declining while modern agricultural devel-opment models that increase labor productivity areemerging A large number of agricultural labor was in thestate of recessive unemployment which led to the transfer ofrural surplus labor to nonagricultural industries [43] 3enonagricultural production function of the countrysideappeared

When it comes to the postindustrial society demandsubject presents the trend of diversification (including ruraland urban residents) and peoplersquos desire for consumptionbegins to transform into nonmaterial products 3e middle-income groups mainly concentrated in cities with higherincome levels and scientific and cultural qualities graduallyprogress to a ldquogreenrdquo consensus driving the formation ofecological consumption trends [31 44] 3e functions un-dertaken by villages in terms of ecology have graduallybecome prominent Simultaneously with the increase inpeoplersquos income peoplersquos requirements for the quality of lifeare improving People are beginning to pay attention to thesocial security system 3e government is also committed tostrengthening social security functions in rural areas

3ereupon this study defines rural multifunction as thesum of various functions provided by rural areas as a carrierfor implementing human activities to meet the diverse needsof residents at a certain stage of socio-economic develop-ment and these functions rely on the resource character-istics of the rural space Rural multifunction can be dividedinto agricultural production function (APF) nonagricul-tural production function (NPF) living function (LF)ecological environmental function (EEF) and social securityfunction (SSF) And rural multifunction which is rooted inthe suitability for the land for multiple uses as is agriculturalmultifunction is an inherent attribute of rural areas Ruralmultifunction has obvious spatial heterogeneity and tem-poral variability (see Figure 1)

32 Balanced Development of Rural MultifunctionAgriculture rural areas and development have alwaysbeen crucial issues for international organizations Oneof the essential features of rural development is to achievemultifunctionalization [45] Firstly comprehensivenessand diversity are the basic features of rural multifunction(see Figure 1) Rural value is the result of the compre-hensive action of various functions 3e diversification ofresidentsrsquo spatial needs determines the simultaneousdevelopment of rural multiple functions that is it isunreasonable to develop one function at the expense ofothers In addition the combination of elements andstructural conditions of the rural area determine theattributes and strength of rural functions and restrict thedirection and trend of the rural multifunction evolution[46] Different regions differ in the combination of ele-ments and characteristics of resources [47] 3ereforerural multifunction cannot achieve equal development3is inequality is manifested in two aspects one is theunequal development of a certain function in differentregions and the other is the unequal development ofvarious functions in the same region

Complexity 3

With that in mind we proposed the concept of thebalanced development of rural multifunction which isdifferent from the equal development of all functionsBalanced development of rural multifunction in this paperrefers to the relative synchronization in the development offunctions whether among functions or among regionswhich is basically kept under the limitation of elementcombination and structure Multifunctional balanced de-velopment not only emphasizes the balanced developmentwith the distinction between functions but also advocates thebalanced development of various rural areas Most functionsare not at their best for some factors and there is still muchroom for improvement Besides there are interactions be-tween rural functions For example in general the non-agricultural production function is negatively related toagricultural production function and ecological environ-mental function [24 48] Some functions were even gonebeyond the limits allowed by the ecological environmentthus causing negative effects on it (see Figure 2) 3e se-lection of rural development paths should be guided by thebalanced development of rural multifunction

4 Materials and Methods

41 Survey of the Research Area Jingjiang city which islocated in eastern China is located between Nanjing city andShanghai city (see Figure 3) and is included in both theShanghai and Nanjing metropolitan areas Jingjiang has atotal land area of 65558 square kilometres 3e terrain ofJingjiang is mostly flat with few hills As the bridgehead forthe economic integration of northern Jiangsu and southernJiangsu it has a coastline of 523 kilometres along theYangtze River and belongs to the Yangtze River EconomicZone 3e economic development level in Jingjiang city isrelatively high At the end of 2017 its rural permanent

population was 236800 and the urbanization rate of thepermanent population was 6555 3e per capita dispos-able income of rural residents is 21361 yuan and theproportion of the primary secondary and tertiary industriesin the GDP is 25 486 489 Since the removal of the countyand the establishment of the city in 1993 the urbanizationprocess of Jingjiang city has been accelerating Since 2004 ithas accelerated the construction of a ldquofive horizontal andthree verticalrdquo road network to create a new spatial pattern ofldquotwo core areas three axes and four zonesrdquo3e scope of themain city zone is gradually expanding and the rural areashave been driven to gradually show a multifunctional de-velopment trend3erefore choosing Jingjiang as the case isrepresentative

Taking the end of 2017 as the time node this studyselected 160 administrative villages in Jingjiang city as theresearch units 3e relevant data mainly include the socio-economic data and land use status data of 160 administrativevillages Among them the socio-economic statistical datacame from the ldquoJingjiang Statistical Yearbookrdquo (2018) andother relevant departments and the land use data came fromthe land use change survey data of Jingjiang city in 2017Since the collective construction land area in 2017 of someadministrative villages could not be obtained the 2018 datawere used instead

42 Research Method

421 Construction of a Rural Multifunction Index SystemAccording to the scientific cognition of rural multifunctionthis study measured rural multifunction from the fivefunctions of agricultural production (APF) nonagriculturalproduction (NPF) living (LF) ecological environmental(EEF) and social security (SSF) respectively Moreover the

Residentsrsquodemand

diversification

Internal factor

Resource characteristics

External factor

Feature

Driving force

Type

offu

ctio

n

Source

Rural multifuction

Agricultural ProductionNonagricultural production

Ecological environmentSocial security

Living

Theoretical basis

Other social activities

Agricultural production activities

DiversityComprehensiveness

InteractivitySpatial heterogeneityTemporal variability

Postindustrial society

Industrial society

Traditional agricultural society

IndustrializationUrbanization

InformatizationGlobalization

Promote

Multifunctional agriculture

Material basis

Rely on

InteractProduction

Consumption

Ecology

Figure 1 Scientific cognition of rural multifunction

4 Complexity

countryside is an extremely complex system [49] Demo-graphic characteristics are the most important and activefactor reflecting changes in rural development 3e foun-dation of rural revitalization is industrial prosperity andindustrial development is the basic indicator to measurerural development And land use is the external represen-tation of changes in rural spatial function structure [50] Sowe selected 16 indicators from three dimensions of peopleland and production for comprehensive evaluation (seeTable 1)

422 Calculation of Function Index 3e accuracy of theevaluation results is directly affected by the chosen stan-dardization method Compared with other methods the z-score method is more effective [53] and is immune to theeffects of the original unit of measurement It can convertdata of different magnitudes into a unified score for com-parison and can be subjected to further statistical processing3erefore the z-score method was adopted for de-dimen-sioning and then a linear transformation was performed tofacilitate comparison 3e minimum relative informationentropy was used to couple the objective weights andsubjective weights [54] 3e comprehensive weights wereobtained with the Lagrange multiplier method Weightedsummation was used to obtain the functional index of eachfunction 3e calculation process is as follows

(1) Dimensionless processing

Zij Xij minus μj

σj

(1)

where Xij is the original data value of the jth index ofthe ith unit μj represents the mean σj represents thestandard deviation and Zij represents the dimen-sionless z-score

(2) Weight calculation with the entropy method

Xijprime

Xij minus min Xj1113872 1113873

max Xj1113872 1113873 minus min Xj1113872 1113873

Yij Xijprime

1113936mi1 Xijprime

ej minusk 1113944m

i1Yij times lnYij1113872 1113873

dj 1 minus ej

Wj dj

1113936nj1 dj

(2)

where Xijprime represents the standardized value of the

evaluation index min(Xj) and max(Xj) are theminimum and maximum values of the jth indicatorrespectively and Wj is the weight (k 1lnmm 160)

(3) Calculation of the comprehensive weight with theminimum relative information entropy

Wj waj times wbj1113872 1113873

05

1113936mj1 waj times wbj1113872 1113873

05 (3)

where Waj and Wbj are the weights calculated by theentropy method and analytic hierarchy processrespectively and Wj is the comprehensive weight

(4) Calculation of index value for rural functions

SSF

EEF

NPFLF

APF

Combination of elementsand structural conditions

Multifunctional development

(a)

SSF

EEF

NPFLF

APF

Combination of elementsand structural conditions

Multifunctional development

(b)

Figure 2 Balanced development of rural multifunction (a) imbalanced development and (b) balanced development

Complexity 5

S Wj times Zij (4)

where S is the index value of the rural functions

423 Identification for Dominant Functions and InferiorFunctions 3e identification of functional types contributesto refined governance of rural areas and rational land usethereby enhancing the value of rural spatial functions [51]In this study the index values of each function werecompared with the sum of the mean and standard deviationof the corresponding function Combined with the char-acteristics of the collected data the judgement rule in Table 2was used to identify the dominant function and the inferiorfunctionswhere Sa is the index value of function a of the

unit Va is the average value of function a of all units and σa

is the standard deviation of function a of all units

5 Results

According to the above method the index values of theagricultural production nonagricultural production livingecological environmental and social security functions ofeach administrative village were calculated A scatter plotwas used for statistical analysis (see Figure 4) And ArcGIS100 software and the natural breaks method were also usedto divide each function into 5 levels higher high mediumlow and lower (see Figure 5)

In Figure 4 the horizontal axis is 160 administrativevillages sorted according to the variance of the index valuesand the vertical axis indicates the strength of the functions ofeach administrative village In general the agricultural

Xilai town

Jishi town

Xieqiao town

Xilai town

Gushan town

Jingcheng town

Shengci town

Dongxing town

Maqiao town

Xinqiao town

Yangtze

River

Wuxi city

Suzhou city

Taixing city

Nantong city

Huanghai Sea

Shandong Province

AnhuiProvince

Shanghai city

Zhejiang Province

Yangtze river

Study areaTown areaNo data area

HighwayRailway

0 5km

Nantong

Suzhou

Yancheng

LianyungangXuzhou

SuqianHuaian

Yangzhou

Nanjing

Changzhou

Taizhou

Zhenjiang

Wuxi

Jiangying bridge

Municipal boundaryCounty boundaryTown boundary

N

Figure 3 Location of the study region

6 Complexity

production function of rural areas in Jingjiang city wasslightly stronger than the nonagricultural productionfunction indicating that agriculture still occupied a domi-nant position And the living function was stronger than thesocial security function From the comparison between thefirst 40 villages and the last 40 villages it can be seen that

there were striking differences in the functional index valuesbetween villages that is different functions of the samevillage had significant gaps In particular there were largedifferences between the social security function and theecological environmental function which had the charac-teristic of polarization

51 Features of Spatial Differentiation of Rural Multifunction

511 Agricultural Production Function Overall the spatialdistribution of rural agricultural production function inJingjiang city has a significant variation (see Figure 5) It hada high degree of agglomeration and the strength of thisfunction showed a more obvious step distribution in thewestern region gradually decreasing from north to south3e higher-value and high-value areas of agricultural pro-duction function included 53 administrative villages con-centrated in Shengci town Maqiao town and Gushan townShengci town and Maqiao town are rich in high-qualitycultivated land and have superior water and soil resourcesAs the main development areas for the planting industry inthe city they concentrated on developing highly efficientagriculture Gushan town which has a flat terrain has goodagricultural production conditions 3ere are 60

Table 1 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Criterionlayer Indicator layer Connotation and calculation method of index Effect Weight

APF

Grain planting area 3e important indicator characterizing grain production capacity + 026913e proportion of agricultural

employees Agricultural employeestotal number of employees + 03775

Usable irrigation ponds andreservoirs Number of irrigation ponds and reservoirs available in the village + 01578

3e proportion of cultivated land Cultivated land areatotal land area + 01956

NPF

3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployees Degree of employed nonagriculture + 03903

Number of individual businesshouseholds

Number of individual industrial and commercial households in thevillage + 02272

Area of collective operatingconstruction land

Refers to the rural construction land with the nature of productionand management + 01983

3e proportion of land for mining Mining land areatotal land area + 01842

LF

Sanitation security Number of households with sanitary toilets + 02263

Tap water security Number of households with tap waternumber of the residentpopulation + 02356

Proportion of homestead Homestead areatotal land area + 05381

EEF Forest coverage Forestland areatotal land area [51] + 06825Ecosystem service value Refer to the research of Zhao et al [52] for calculation + 03175

SSF

Participation in medical insurance Number of participants in cooperative medical insurancenumber ofregistered permanent resident + 03003

Participation in social pensionplans

Number of participants in social pension plansnumber of registeredpermanent resident + 03155

Per capita library collection Library collectionnumber of the resident population + 03842

Table 2 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Condition Result(Sa(Va + σa))ge 08 Function a is the dominant function of the unit08gt (Sa(Va + σa))ge 05 Function a is the nondominant function of the unit05gt (Sa(Va + σa)) Function a is the inferior function of the unit

0010203040506070809

1

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

APFNPFLF

EEFSSF

Figure 4 Index value of rural multifunction in Jingjiang city in2017

Complexity 7

administrative villages in the lower-value and low-valueareas which are mainly located around urban areas Withthe advancement of urbanization this kind of area is affectedby urban radiation and has a high degree of land use de-velopment a shrinking proportion of cultivated land and adiminishing capacity to attract and absorb agriculturalworkers resulting in a weak agricultural productionfunction

512 Nonagricultural Production Function 3e nonagri-cultural production function of the city presented evidentspatial agglomeration characteristics which is generallyopposite to the agricultural production function 3e 51administrative villages with high levels of this function weremainly distributed in Xinqiao town Dongxing town andJingcheng town along the river indicating that the YangtzeRiver Economic Zone cities and towns were obvious drivers

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(a)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(b)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(c)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(d)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(e)

Figure 5 Spatial distribution of the rural function indexes in Jingjiang city in 2017 (a) APF (b) NPF (c) LF (d) EEF and (e) SSF

8 Complexity

for nonagricultural production Located in the southwest ofJingjiang city north of the Yangtze River Xinqiao town andDongxing town are the main deployment areas of the in-dustrial parks Xinqiao town is adjacent to the GuangjingExpressway and Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge in the eastDongxing town is an urban expansion area adjacent to theurban area As the seat of the main urban area Jingchengtown has Jiangyin Bridge which connects the area to Wuxicity 3is type of area which has convenient transportationis the main development area along the river and the mainconduit of industrial transfer in southern Jiangsu and it hada high proportion of secondary and tertiary industries and ahigh index value for the nonagricultural production func-tion 3e low-value and lower-value areas were mainlyconcentrated in the northwest with a total of 63 adminis-trative villages Such areas were less affected by urban ra-diation and the Yangtze River Economic Zone and they hadno economic or geographic conditions conducive to in-dustrial development 3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployment in these areas was relatively small leading to alow index value for the nonagricultural production function

513 Living Function Figure 5 shows that the index value ofthe living function in the city was not high 3e 31 ad-ministrative villages with higher index values were mainlyconcentrated around urban areas such as Jingcheng townXieqiao town and Xinqiao town 3ese villages have closeurban-rural links convenient transportation complete in-frastructure and public facilities a large number of em-ployment opportunities and convenient commutingmaking them the preferred residence for most residents 3espatial distribution of the villages with low index values ofthe living function was scattered 3ese 74 administrativevillages were mainly distributed in Maqiao town Gushantown Dongxing town and Xilai town Areas that are faraway from cities and towns have imperfect road systems andservice facilities and low index values of living functions

514 Ecological Environmental Function 3e ecologicalenvironmental function for most villages in the city wasweak 3e higher-value areas of this function were dis-tributed in areas with a strong agricultural productionfunction and the areas that were far from the urban mainlyincluding Shengci town Maqiao town Gushan town andDongxing town Among them Maqiao town and Gushantown are regarded as the important areas of ecologicalfunction Dongxing town which is the largest Cuiguan pearplanting base in Jingjiang has a well-developed plantingindustry 3e land development intensity in this type of areawas relatively low and the contribution to ecosystemconservation was high Jingjiang city mainly realized thecoordinated development of the whole cityrsquos economy andsociety through the economic growth point (urban area) andaxis (industrial zone along the river) Many types of landwith high ecosystem service value have been developed forregional economic industrial and commercial develop-ment At the same time Jingjiang as a port industrial cityhas vigorously promoted development along the river and

joint development across the river As a result the ecologicalenvironment has been destroyed 3erefore the 90 ad-ministrative villages with low index values of ecologicalenvironmental function were distributed in the industrialareas close to the urban area and along the river

515 Social Security Function 3e villages with high indexvalues of social security function were mainly located in theperiphery of towns and areas with a stronger agriculturalproduction function and their distribution was slightlyscattered Among them there were 11 administrative vil-lages in the higher-value area and 44 in the high-value areaIn this type villages with strong agricultural productionfunctions that rely on local agriculture for development hadrelatively complete social service systems such as health careand pensions Villages adjacent to the urban area can alsorely on the urban social service system due to the closeurban-rural connection 3e 55 administrative villages withweak social security functions were mainly located in theindustrial parks of Xinqiao town and Gushan town Due tothe vigorous development of industry in these regions theyhave employed a substantial number of nonindigenouspeople resulting in a low level of average social services anda low index value for the social security function

52 Recognition of Functional Combinations 3e dominantfunctions and the inferior functions were identified by themethod mentioned above And if there were multiple ad-vantageous functions the strongest function was selectedConversely if there are multiple inferior functions thefunction with the lowest index value was selected If therewas a situation where there were 4 or 5 dominant functionsthe area was determined to ldquointegrated developmentrdquo 3erest were named according to the form of ldquodominantfunctions-inferior functionsrdquo Among them because ldquoAPF-oriented-NPF-laggedrdquo and ldquoNPF-oriented-APF-laggedrdquowere separately distributed in the northwest and southwestother inferior functions were identified as alternatives tomaintain the effectiveness of the type identification Con-sidering the necessity of the coordinated development ofsocial security and the living functions the ldquoEEF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-ented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo typeswere merged Ultimately 17 types of functional combina-tions were identified to place emphasis on highlighting thefunctional characteristics of each unit and obtain a com-prehensive multifunctional pattern of rural areas in Jingjiangcity (see Figure 6)

6 Discussion

61 Targeted Rural Development Paths Oriented by BalancedDevelopment 3e types of rural multifunction combina-tions reflect the current development level of functions ineach village 3ereupon the identification of rural multi-function combinations can serve to locate the village ac-curately [49] and to find strengths and weaknesses Based onthe principle of balanced development for rural

Complexity 9

multifunction this study analysed the identified multi-function combinations and divided the future developmentof rural areas into 5 types according to the number andcombination of dominant functions and inferior function inthe villages Corresponding development paths were pro-posed at the same time (see Table 3) Concretely we clas-sified villages with 4-5 dominant functions as the ldquointegrateddevelopmentrdquo those without inferior functions as ldquodomi-nant function breakthroughrdquo and those with both dominantand inferior functions as ldquoinferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo And if the villages had nodominant function but inferior functions they were clas-sified as ldquoinferior function enhancementrdquo3e villages whichhad no dominant function and their combination of ele-ments and resource characteristics cannot well support thedevelopment of the weakest functions were judged to beldquotransfer developmentrdquo Targeted rural development pathscan promote the scientific development of different villagesand in turn enhance the multifunctionality for villages

611 Integrated Development Areas with integrated de-velopment have no weak function and various ruralfunctions are relatively well-developed and balanced 3eseareas not only have natural resource endowments but alsocertain geographical advantages3erefore on the one handthis type of village should pursue the integrated developmentof agricultural and nonagricultural industries and reform theorganic structure of the rural industries On the other hand

based on the sound development of functions they shouldpay close attention to the quality of development to proceedtowards sustainable development 3e governance and errorcorrection mechanisms for the territorial space of theYangtze River Economic Zone established by Jingjiang cityproposed the concept of the Yangtze River coast and itssurrounding 5 kilometres Villages within 5 kilometres of theYangtze River coast and its periphery can place a moderateemphasis on industrial development

612 Dominant Function Breakthrough 3is type whichhas no undeveloped function is outstanding in a certainfunction In the future great attention should be paid tooptimizing the leading functions by this kind of villageldquoAPF-orientedrdquo villages are supposed to enhance the qualityof cultivated land for yield assurance And actively pro-moting rural land circulation to develop efficient large-scaleand modern agriculture is also an appropriate way Besidesthis type should take the endogenous development path suchas utilizing agricultural resources with outstanding localcomparative advantages to develop high-quality and char-acteristic products and services and to build personalizedand branded agriculture 3e construction of the bases forspecial agricultural and secondary products and the bases fortourism and leisure would also be an effective direction 3eldquoNPF-orientedrdquo villages were mainly distributed in thesouthwest of Jingjiang and have convenient water and landtransportation Among them the villages along the Yangtze

APF lagged

SSF lagged

EEF lagged

LF lagged

0 5km

Townno data

Town boundary

Yangtze riverAPF oriented-SSF lagged

APF oriented-EEF lagged

APF oriented

LF oriented

LF oriented-SSF lagged

EEF oriented

SSF oriented

SSF oriented-EEF lagged

SSF oriented-LF lagged

Integrated development

NPF oriented

NPF oriented-EEF lagged

NPF oriented-SSF lagged

Yangtze

River

N

Figure 6 Types of the rural multifunction combinations

10 Complexity

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

With that in mind we proposed the concept of thebalanced development of rural multifunction which isdifferent from the equal development of all functionsBalanced development of rural multifunction in this paperrefers to the relative synchronization in the development offunctions whether among functions or among regionswhich is basically kept under the limitation of elementcombination and structure Multifunctional balanced de-velopment not only emphasizes the balanced developmentwith the distinction between functions but also advocates thebalanced development of various rural areas Most functionsare not at their best for some factors and there is still muchroom for improvement Besides there are interactions be-tween rural functions For example in general the non-agricultural production function is negatively related toagricultural production function and ecological environ-mental function [24 48] Some functions were even gonebeyond the limits allowed by the ecological environmentthus causing negative effects on it (see Figure 2) 3e se-lection of rural development paths should be guided by thebalanced development of rural multifunction

4 Materials and Methods

41 Survey of the Research Area Jingjiang city which islocated in eastern China is located between Nanjing city andShanghai city (see Figure 3) and is included in both theShanghai and Nanjing metropolitan areas Jingjiang has atotal land area of 65558 square kilometres 3e terrain ofJingjiang is mostly flat with few hills As the bridgehead forthe economic integration of northern Jiangsu and southernJiangsu it has a coastline of 523 kilometres along theYangtze River and belongs to the Yangtze River EconomicZone 3e economic development level in Jingjiang city isrelatively high At the end of 2017 its rural permanent

population was 236800 and the urbanization rate of thepermanent population was 6555 3e per capita dispos-able income of rural residents is 21361 yuan and theproportion of the primary secondary and tertiary industriesin the GDP is 25 486 489 Since the removal of the countyand the establishment of the city in 1993 the urbanizationprocess of Jingjiang city has been accelerating Since 2004 ithas accelerated the construction of a ldquofive horizontal andthree verticalrdquo road network to create a new spatial pattern ofldquotwo core areas three axes and four zonesrdquo3e scope of themain city zone is gradually expanding and the rural areashave been driven to gradually show a multifunctional de-velopment trend3erefore choosing Jingjiang as the case isrepresentative

Taking the end of 2017 as the time node this studyselected 160 administrative villages in Jingjiang city as theresearch units 3e relevant data mainly include the socio-economic data and land use status data of 160 administrativevillages Among them the socio-economic statistical datacame from the ldquoJingjiang Statistical Yearbookrdquo (2018) andother relevant departments and the land use data came fromthe land use change survey data of Jingjiang city in 2017Since the collective construction land area in 2017 of someadministrative villages could not be obtained the 2018 datawere used instead

42 Research Method

421 Construction of a Rural Multifunction Index SystemAccording to the scientific cognition of rural multifunctionthis study measured rural multifunction from the fivefunctions of agricultural production (APF) nonagriculturalproduction (NPF) living (LF) ecological environmental(EEF) and social security (SSF) respectively Moreover the

Residentsrsquodemand

diversification

Internal factor

Resource characteristics

External factor

Feature

Driving force

Type

offu

ctio

n

Source

Rural multifuction

Agricultural ProductionNonagricultural production

Ecological environmentSocial security

Living

Theoretical basis

Other social activities

Agricultural production activities

DiversityComprehensiveness

InteractivitySpatial heterogeneityTemporal variability

Postindustrial society

Industrial society

Traditional agricultural society

IndustrializationUrbanization

InformatizationGlobalization

Promote

Multifunctional agriculture

Material basis

Rely on

InteractProduction

Consumption

Ecology

Figure 1 Scientific cognition of rural multifunction

4 Complexity

countryside is an extremely complex system [49] Demo-graphic characteristics are the most important and activefactor reflecting changes in rural development 3e foun-dation of rural revitalization is industrial prosperity andindustrial development is the basic indicator to measurerural development And land use is the external represen-tation of changes in rural spatial function structure [50] Sowe selected 16 indicators from three dimensions of peopleland and production for comprehensive evaluation (seeTable 1)

422 Calculation of Function Index 3e accuracy of theevaluation results is directly affected by the chosen stan-dardization method Compared with other methods the z-score method is more effective [53] and is immune to theeffects of the original unit of measurement It can convertdata of different magnitudes into a unified score for com-parison and can be subjected to further statistical processing3erefore the z-score method was adopted for de-dimen-sioning and then a linear transformation was performed tofacilitate comparison 3e minimum relative informationentropy was used to couple the objective weights andsubjective weights [54] 3e comprehensive weights wereobtained with the Lagrange multiplier method Weightedsummation was used to obtain the functional index of eachfunction 3e calculation process is as follows

(1) Dimensionless processing

Zij Xij minus μj

σj

(1)

where Xij is the original data value of the jth index ofthe ith unit μj represents the mean σj represents thestandard deviation and Zij represents the dimen-sionless z-score

(2) Weight calculation with the entropy method

Xijprime

Xij minus min Xj1113872 1113873

max Xj1113872 1113873 minus min Xj1113872 1113873

Yij Xijprime

1113936mi1 Xijprime

ej minusk 1113944m

i1Yij times lnYij1113872 1113873

dj 1 minus ej

Wj dj

1113936nj1 dj

(2)

where Xijprime represents the standardized value of the

evaluation index min(Xj) and max(Xj) are theminimum and maximum values of the jth indicatorrespectively and Wj is the weight (k 1lnmm 160)

(3) Calculation of the comprehensive weight with theminimum relative information entropy

Wj waj times wbj1113872 1113873

05

1113936mj1 waj times wbj1113872 1113873

05 (3)

where Waj and Wbj are the weights calculated by theentropy method and analytic hierarchy processrespectively and Wj is the comprehensive weight

(4) Calculation of index value for rural functions

SSF

EEF

NPFLF

APF

Combination of elementsand structural conditions

Multifunctional development

(a)

SSF

EEF

NPFLF

APF

Combination of elementsand structural conditions

Multifunctional development

(b)

Figure 2 Balanced development of rural multifunction (a) imbalanced development and (b) balanced development

Complexity 5

S Wj times Zij (4)

where S is the index value of the rural functions

423 Identification for Dominant Functions and InferiorFunctions 3e identification of functional types contributesto refined governance of rural areas and rational land usethereby enhancing the value of rural spatial functions [51]In this study the index values of each function werecompared with the sum of the mean and standard deviationof the corresponding function Combined with the char-acteristics of the collected data the judgement rule in Table 2was used to identify the dominant function and the inferiorfunctionswhere Sa is the index value of function a of the

unit Va is the average value of function a of all units and σa

is the standard deviation of function a of all units

5 Results

According to the above method the index values of theagricultural production nonagricultural production livingecological environmental and social security functions ofeach administrative village were calculated A scatter plotwas used for statistical analysis (see Figure 4) And ArcGIS100 software and the natural breaks method were also usedto divide each function into 5 levels higher high mediumlow and lower (see Figure 5)

In Figure 4 the horizontal axis is 160 administrativevillages sorted according to the variance of the index valuesand the vertical axis indicates the strength of the functions ofeach administrative village In general the agricultural

Xilai town

Jishi town

Xieqiao town

Xilai town

Gushan town

Jingcheng town

Shengci town

Dongxing town

Maqiao town

Xinqiao town

Yangtze

River

Wuxi city

Suzhou city

Taixing city

Nantong city

Huanghai Sea

Shandong Province

AnhuiProvince

Shanghai city

Zhejiang Province

Yangtze river

Study areaTown areaNo data area

HighwayRailway

0 5km

Nantong

Suzhou

Yancheng

LianyungangXuzhou

SuqianHuaian

Yangzhou

Nanjing

Changzhou

Taizhou

Zhenjiang

Wuxi

Jiangying bridge

Municipal boundaryCounty boundaryTown boundary

N

Figure 3 Location of the study region

6 Complexity

production function of rural areas in Jingjiang city wasslightly stronger than the nonagricultural productionfunction indicating that agriculture still occupied a domi-nant position And the living function was stronger than thesocial security function From the comparison between thefirst 40 villages and the last 40 villages it can be seen that

there were striking differences in the functional index valuesbetween villages that is different functions of the samevillage had significant gaps In particular there were largedifferences between the social security function and theecological environmental function which had the charac-teristic of polarization

51 Features of Spatial Differentiation of Rural Multifunction

511 Agricultural Production Function Overall the spatialdistribution of rural agricultural production function inJingjiang city has a significant variation (see Figure 5) It hada high degree of agglomeration and the strength of thisfunction showed a more obvious step distribution in thewestern region gradually decreasing from north to south3e higher-value and high-value areas of agricultural pro-duction function included 53 administrative villages con-centrated in Shengci town Maqiao town and Gushan townShengci town and Maqiao town are rich in high-qualitycultivated land and have superior water and soil resourcesAs the main development areas for the planting industry inthe city they concentrated on developing highly efficientagriculture Gushan town which has a flat terrain has goodagricultural production conditions 3ere are 60

Table 1 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Criterionlayer Indicator layer Connotation and calculation method of index Effect Weight

APF

Grain planting area 3e important indicator characterizing grain production capacity + 026913e proportion of agricultural

employees Agricultural employeestotal number of employees + 03775

Usable irrigation ponds andreservoirs Number of irrigation ponds and reservoirs available in the village + 01578

3e proportion of cultivated land Cultivated land areatotal land area + 01956

NPF

3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployees Degree of employed nonagriculture + 03903

Number of individual businesshouseholds

Number of individual industrial and commercial households in thevillage + 02272

Area of collective operatingconstruction land

Refers to the rural construction land with the nature of productionand management + 01983

3e proportion of land for mining Mining land areatotal land area + 01842

LF

Sanitation security Number of households with sanitary toilets + 02263

Tap water security Number of households with tap waternumber of the residentpopulation + 02356

Proportion of homestead Homestead areatotal land area + 05381

EEF Forest coverage Forestland areatotal land area [51] + 06825Ecosystem service value Refer to the research of Zhao et al [52] for calculation + 03175

SSF

Participation in medical insurance Number of participants in cooperative medical insurancenumber ofregistered permanent resident + 03003

Participation in social pensionplans

Number of participants in social pension plansnumber of registeredpermanent resident + 03155

Per capita library collection Library collectionnumber of the resident population + 03842

Table 2 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Condition Result(Sa(Va + σa))ge 08 Function a is the dominant function of the unit08gt (Sa(Va + σa))ge 05 Function a is the nondominant function of the unit05gt (Sa(Va + σa)) Function a is the inferior function of the unit

0010203040506070809

1

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

APFNPFLF

EEFSSF

Figure 4 Index value of rural multifunction in Jingjiang city in2017

Complexity 7

administrative villages in the lower-value and low-valueareas which are mainly located around urban areas Withthe advancement of urbanization this kind of area is affectedby urban radiation and has a high degree of land use de-velopment a shrinking proportion of cultivated land and adiminishing capacity to attract and absorb agriculturalworkers resulting in a weak agricultural productionfunction

512 Nonagricultural Production Function 3e nonagri-cultural production function of the city presented evidentspatial agglomeration characteristics which is generallyopposite to the agricultural production function 3e 51administrative villages with high levels of this function weremainly distributed in Xinqiao town Dongxing town andJingcheng town along the river indicating that the YangtzeRiver Economic Zone cities and towns were obvious drivers

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(a)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(b)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(c)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(d)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(e)

Figure 5 Spatial distribution of the rural function indexes in Jingjiang city in 2017 (a) APF (b) NPF (c) LF (d) EEF and (e) SSF

8 Complexity

for nonagricultural production Located in the southwest ofJingjiang city north of the Yangtze River Xinqiao town andDongxing town are the main deployment areas of the in-dustrial parks Xinqiao town is adjacent to the GuangjingExpressway and Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge in the eastDongxing town is an urban expansion area adjacent to theurban area As the seat of the main urban area Jingchengtown has Jiangyin Bridge which connects the area to Wuxicity 3is type of area which has convenient transportationis the main development area along the river and the mainconduit of industrial transfer in southern Jiangsu and it hada high proportion of secondary and tertiary industries and ahigh index value for the nonagricultural production func-tion 3e low-value and lower-value areas were mainlyconcentrated in the northwest with a total of 63 adminis-trative villages Such areas were less affected by urban ra-diation and the Yangtze River Economic Zone and they hadno economic or geographic conditions conducive to in-dustrial development 3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployment in these areas was relatively small leading to alow index value for the nonagricultural production function

513 Living Function Figure 5 shows that the index value ofthe living function in the city was not high 3e 31 ad-ministrative villages with higher index values were mainlyconcentrated around urban areas such as Jingcheng townXieqiao town and Xinqiao town 3ese villages have closeurban-rural links convenient transportation complete in-frastructure and public facilities a large number of em-ployment opportunities and convenient commutingmaking them the preferred residence for most residents 3espatial distribution of the villages with low index values ofthe living function was scattered 3ese 74 administrativevillages were mainly distributed in Maqiao town Gushantown Dongxing town and Xilai town Areas that are faraway from cities and towns have imperfect road systems andservice facilities and low index values of living functions

514 Ecological Environmental Function 3e ecologicalenvironmental function for most villages in the city wasweak 3e higher-value areas of this function were dis-tributed in areas with a strong agricultural productionfunction and the areas that were far from the urban mainlyincluding Shengci town Maqiao town Gushan town andDongxing town Among them Maqiao town and Gushantown are regarded as the important areas of ecologicalfunction Dongxing town which is the largest Cuiguan pearplanting base in Jingjiang has a well-developed plantingindustry 3e land development intensity in this type of areawas relatively low and the contribution to ecosystemconservation was high Jingjiang city mainly realized thecoordinated development of the whole cityrsquos economy andsociety through the economic growth point (urban area) andaxis (industrial zone along the river) Many types of landwith high ecosystem service value have been developed forregional economic industrial and commercial develop-ment At the same time Jingjiang as a port industrial cityhas vigorously promoted development along the river and

joint development across the river As a result the ecologicalenvironment has been destroyed 3erefore the 90 ad-ministrative villages with low index values of ecologicalenvironmental function were distributed in the industrialareas close to the urban area and along the river

515 Social Security Function 3e villages with high indexvalues of social security function were mainly located in theperiphery of towns and areas with a stronger agriculturalproduction function and their distribution was slightlyscattered Among them there were 11 administrative vil-lages in the higher-value area and 44 in the high-value areaIn this type villages with strong agricultural productionfunctions that rely on local agriculture for development hadrelatively complete social service systems such as health careand pensions Villages adjacent to the urban area can alsorely on the urban social service system due to the closeurban-rural connection 3e 55 administrative villages withweak social security functions were mainly located in theindustrial parks of Xinqiao town and Gushan town Due tothe vigorous development of industry in these regions theyhave employed a substantial number of nonindigenouspeople resulting in a low level of average social services anda low index value for the social security function

52 Recognition of Functional Combinations 3e dominantfunctions and the inferior functions were identified by themethod mentioned above And if there were multiple ad-vantageous functions the strongest function was selectedConversely if there are multiple inferior functions thefunction with the lowest index value was selected If therewas a situation where there were 4 or 5 dominant functionsthe area was determined to ldquointegrated developmentrdquo 3erest were named according to the form of ldquodominantfunctions-inferior functionsrdquo Among them because ldquoAPF-oriented-NPF-laggedrdquo and ldquoNPF-oriented-APF-laggedrdquowere separately distributed in the northwest and southwestother inferior functions were identified as alternatives tomaintain the effectiveness of the type identification Con-sidering the necessity of the coordinated development ofsocial security and the living functions the ldquoEEF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-ented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo typeswere merged Ultimately 17 types of functional combina-tions were identified to place emphasis on highlighting thefunctional characteristics of each unit and obtain a com-prehensive multifunctional pattern of rural areas in Jingjiangcity (see Figure 6)

6 Discussion

61 Targeted Rural Development Paths Oriented by BalancedDevelopment 3e types of rural multifunction combina-tions reflect the current development level of functions ineach village 3ereupon the identification of rural multi-function combinations can serve to locate the village ac-curately [49] and to find strengths and weaknesses Based onthe principle of balanced development for rural

Complexity 9

multifunction this study analysed the identified multi-function combinations and divided the future developmentof rural areas into 5 types according to the number andcombination of dominant functions and inferior function inthe villages Corresponding development paths were pro-posed at the same time (see Table 3) Concretely we clas-sified villages with 4-5 dominant functions as the ldquointegrateddevelopmentrdquo those without inferior functions as ldquodomi-nant function breakthroughrdquo and those with both dominantand inferior functions as ldquoinferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo And if the villages had nodominant function but inferior functions they were clas-sified as ldquoinferior function enhancementrdquo3e villages whichhad no dominant function and their combination of ele-ments and resource characteristics cannot well support thedevelopment of the weakest functions were judged to beldquotransfer developmentrdquo Targeted rural development pathscan promote the scientific development of different villagesand in turn enhance the multifunctionality for villages

611 Integrated Development Areas with integrated de-velopment have no weak function and various ruralfunctions are relatively well-developed and balanced 3eseareas not only have natural resource endowments but alsocertain geographical advantages3erefore on the one handthis type of village should pursue the integrated developmentof agricultural and nonagricultural industries and reform theorganic structure of the rural industries On the other hand

based on the sound development of functions they shouldpay close attention to the quality of development to proceedtowards sustainable development 3e governance and errorcorrection mechanisms for the territorial space of theYangtze River Economic Zone established by Jingjiang cityproposed the concept of the Yangtze River coast and itssurrounding 5 kilometres Villages within 5 kilometres of theYangtze River coast and its periphery can place a moderateemphasis on industrial development

612 Dominant Function Breakthrough 3is type whichhas no undeveloped function is outstanding in a certainfunction In the future great attention should be paid tooptimizing the leading functions by this kind of villageldquoAPF-orientedrdquo villages are supposed to enhance the qualityof cultivated land for yield assurance And actively pro-moting rural land circulation to develop efficient large-scaleand modern agriculture is also an appropriate way Besidesthis type should take the endogenous development path suchas utilizing agricultural resources with outstanding localcomparative advantages to develop high-quality and char-acteristic products and services and to build personalizedand branded agriculture 3e construction of the bases forspecial agricultural and secondary products and the bases fortourism and leisure would also be an effective direction 3eldquoNPF-orientedrdquo villages were mainly distributed in thesouthwest of Jingjiang and have convenient water and landtransportation Among them the villages along the Yangtze

APF lagged

SSF lagged

EEF lagged

LF lagged

0 5km

Townno data

Town boundary

Yangtze riverAPF oriented-SSF lagged

APF oriented-EEF lagged

APF oriented

LF oriented

LF oriented-SSF lagged

EEF oriented

SSF oriented

SSF oriented-EEF lagged

SSF oriented-LF lagged

Integrated development

NPF oriented

NPF oriented-EEF lagged

NPF oriented-SSF lagged

Yangtze

River

N

Figure 6 Types of the rural multifunction combinations

10 Complexity

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

countryside is an extremely complex system [49] Demo-graphic characteristics are the most important and activefactor reflecting changes in rural development 3e foun-dation of rural revitalization is industrial prosperity andindustrial development is the basic indicator to measurerural development And land use is the external represen-tation of changes in rural spatial function structure [50] Sowe selected 16 indicators from three dimensions of peopleland and production for comprehensive evaluation (seeTable 1)

422 Calculation of Function Index 3e accuracy of theevaluation results is directly affected by the chosen stan-dardization method Compared with other methods the z-score method is more effective [53] and is immune to theeffects of the original unit of measurement It can convertdata of different magnitudes into a unified score for com-parison and can be subjected to further statistical processing3erefore the z-score method was adopted for de-dimen-sioning and then a linear transformation was performed tofacilitate comparison 3e minimum relative informationentropy was used to couple the objective weights andsubjective weights [54] 3e comprehensive weights wereobtained with the Lagrange multiplier method Weightedsummation was used to obtain the functional index of eachfunction 3e calculation process is as follows

(1) Dimensionless processing

Zij Xij minus μj

σj

(1)

where Xij is the original data value of the jth index ofthe ith unit μj represents the mean σj represents thestandard deviation and Zij represents the dimen-sionless z-score

(2) Weight calculation with the entropy method

Xijprime

Xij minus min Xj1113872 1113873

max Xj1113872 1113873 minus min Xj1113872 1113873

Yij Xijprime

1113936mi1 Xijprime

ej minusk 1113944m

i1Yij times lnYij1113872 1113873

dj 1 minus ej

Wj dj

1113936nj1 dj

(2)

where Xijprime represents the standardized value of the

evaluation index min(Xj) and max(Xj) are theminimum and maximum values of the jth indicatorrespectively and Wj is the weight (k 1lnmm 160)

(3) Calculation of the comprehensive weight with theminimum relative information entropy

Wj waj times wbj1113872 1113873

05

1113936mj1 waj times wbj1113872 1113873

05 (3)

where Waj and Wbj are the weights calculated by theentropy method and analytic hierarchy processrespectively and Wj is the comprehensive weight

(4) Calculation of index value for rural functions

SSF

EEF

NPFLF

APF

Combination of elementsand structural conditions

Multifunctional development

(a)

SSF

EEF

NPFLF

APF

Combination of elementsand structural conditions

Multifunctional development

(b)

Figure 2 Balanced development of rural multifunction (a) imbalanced development and (b) balanced development

Complexity 5

S Wj times Zij (4)

where S is the index value of the rural functions

423 Identification for Dominant Functions and InferiorFunctions 3e identification of functional types contributesto refined governance of rural areas and rational land usethereby enhancing the value of rural spatial functions [51]In this study the index values of each function werecompared with the sum of the mean and standard deviationof the corresponding function Combined with the char-acteristics of the collected data the judgement rule in Table 2was used to identify the dominant function and the inferiorfunctionswhere Sa is the index value of function a of the

unit Va is the average value of function a of all units and σa

is the standard deviation of function a of all units

5 Results

According to the above method the index values of theagricultural production nonagricultural production livingecological environmental and social security functions ofeach administrative village were calculated A scatter plotwas used for statistical analysis (see Figure 4) And ArcGIS100 software and the natural breaks method were also usedto divide each function into 5 levels higher high mediumlow and lower (see Figure 5)

In Figure 4 the horizontal axis is 160 administrativevillages sorted according to the variance of the index valuesand the vertical axis indicates the strength of the functions ofeach administrative village In general the agricultural

Xilai town

Jishi town

Xieqiao town

Xilai town

Gushan town

Jingcheng town

Shengci town

Dongxing town

Maqiao town

Xinqiao town

Yangtze

River

Wuxi city

Suzhou city

Taixing city

Nantong city

Huanghai Sea

Shandong Province

AnhuiProvince

Shanghai city

Zhejiang Province

Yangtze river

Study areaTown areaNo data area

HighwayRailway

0 5km

Nantong

Suzhou

Yancheng

LianyungangXuzhou

SuqianHuaian

Yangzhou

Nanjing

Changzhou

Taizhou

Zhenjiang

Wuxi

Jiangying bridge

Municipal boundaryCounty boundaryTown boundary

N

Figure 3 Location of the study region

6 Complexity

production function of rural areas in Jingjiang city wasslightly stronger than the nonagricultural productionfunction indicating that agriculture still occupied a domi-nant position And the living function was stronger than thesocial security function From the comparison between thefirst 40 villages and the last 40 villages it can be seen that

there were striking differences in the functional index valuesbetween villages that is different functions of the samevillage had significant gaps In particular there were largedifferences between the social security function and theecological environmental function which had the charac-teristic of polarization

51 Features of Spatial Differentiation of Rural Multifunction

511 Agricultural Production Function Overall the spatialdistribution of rural agricultural production function inJingjiang city has a significant variation (see Figure 5) It hada high degree of agglomeration and the strength of thisfunction showed a more obvious step distribution in thewestern region gradually decreasing from north to south3e higher-value and high-value areas of agricultural pro-duction function included 53 administrative villages con-centrated in Shengci town Maqiao town and Gushan townShengci town and Maqiao town are rich in high-qualitycultivated land and have superior water and soil resourcesAs the main development areas for the planting industry inthe city they concentrated on developing highly efficientagriculture Gushan town which has a flat terrain has goodagricultural production conditions 3ere are 60

Table 1 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Criterionlayer Indicator layer Connotation and calculation method of index Effect Weight

APF

Grain planting area 3e important indicator characterizing grain production capacity + 026913e proportion of agricultural

employees Agricultural employeestotal number of employees + 03775

Usable irrigation ponds andreservoirs Number of irrigation ponds and reservoirs available in the village + 01578

3e proportion of cultivated land Cultivated land areatotal land area + 01956

NPF

3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployees Degree of employed nonagriculture + 03903

Number of individual businesshouseholds

Number of individual industrial and commercial households in thevillage + 02272

Area of collective operatingconstruction land

Refers to the rural construction land with the nature of productionand management + 01983

3e proportion of land for mining Mining land areatotal land area + 01842

LF

Sanitation security Number of households with sanitary toilets + 02263

Tap water security Number of households with tap waternumber of the residentpopulation + 02356

Proportion of homestead Homestead areatotal land area + 05381

EEF Forest coverage Forestland areatotal land area [51] + 06825Ecosystem service value Refer to the research of Zhao et al [52] for calculation + 03175

SSF

Participation in medical insurance Number of participants in cooperative medical insurancenumber ofregistered permanent resident + 03003

Participation in social pensionplans

Number of participants in social pension plansnumber of registeredpermanent resident + 03155

Per capita library collection Library collectionnumber of the resident population + 03842

Table 2 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Condition Result(Sa(Va + σa))ge 08 Function a is the dominant function of the unit08gt (Sa(Va + σa))ge 05 Function a is the nondominant function of the unit05gt (Sa(Va + σa)) Function a is the inferior function of the unit

0010203040506070809

1

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

APFNPFLF

EEFSSF

Figure 4 Index value of rural multifunction in Jingjiang city in2017

Complexity 7

administrative villages in the lower-value and low-valueareas which are mainly located around urban areas Withthe advancement of urbanization this kind of area is affectedby urban radiation and has a high degree of land use de-velopment a shrinking proportion of cultivated land and adiminishing capacity to attract and absorb agriculturalworkers resulting in a weak agricultural productionfunction

512 Nonagricultural Production Function 3e nonagri-cultural production function of the city presented evidentspatial agglomeration characteristics which is generallyopposite to the agricultural production function 3e 51administrative villages with high levels of this function weremainly distributed in Xinqiao town Dongxing town andJingcheng town along the river indicating that the YangtzeRiver Economic Zone cities and towns were obvious drivers

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(a)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(b)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(c)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(d)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(e)

Figure 5 Spatial distribution of the rural function indexes in Jingjiang city in 2017 (a) APF (b) NPF (c) LF (d) EEF and (e) SSF

8 Complexity

for nonagricultural production Located in the southwest ofJingjiang city north of the Yangtze River Xinqiao town andDongxing town are the main deployment areas of the in-dustrial parks Xinqiao town is adjacent to the GuangjingExpressway and Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge in the eastDongxing town is an urban expansion area adjacent to theurban area As the seat of the main urban area Jingchengtown has Jiangyin Bridge which connects the area to Wuxicity 3is type of area which has convenient transportationis the main development area along the river and the mainconduit of industrial transfer in southern Jiangsu and it hada high proportion of secondary and tertiary industries and ahigh index value for the nonagricultural production func-tion 3e low-value and lower-value areas were mainlyconcentrated in the northwest with a total of 63 adminis-trative villages Such areas were less affected by urban ra-diation and the Yangtze River Economic Zone and they hadno economic or geographic conditions conducive to in-dustrial development 3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployment in these areas was relatively small leading to alow index value for the nonagricultural production function

513 Living Function Figure 5 shows that the index value ofthe living function in the city was not high 3e 31 ad-ministrative villages with higher index values were mainlyconcentrated around urban areas such as Jingcheng townXieqiao town and Xinqiao town 3ese villages have closeurban-rural links convenient transportation complete in-frastructure and public facilities a large number of em-ployment opportunities and convenient commutingmaking them the preferred residence for most residents 3espatial distribution of the villages with low index values ofthe living function was scattered 3ese 74 administrativevillages were mainly distributed in Maqiao town Gushantown Dongxing town and Xilai town Areas that are faraway from cities and towns have imperfect road systems andservice facilities and low index values of living functions

514 Ecological Environmental Function 3e ecologicalenvironmental function for most villages in the city wasweak 3e higher-value areas of this function were dis-tributed in areas with a strong agricultural productionfunction and the areas that were far from the urban mainlyincluding Shengci town Maqiao town Gushan town andDongxing town Among them Maqiao town and Gushantown are regarded as the important areas of ecologicalfunction Dongxing town which is the largest Cuiguan pearplanting base in Jingjiang has a well-developed plantingindustry 3e land development intensity in this type of areawas relatively low and the contribution to ecosystemconservation was high Jingjiang city mainly realized thecoordinated development of the whole cityrsquos economy andsociety through the economic growth point (urban area) andaxis (industrial zone along the river) Many types of landwith high ecosystem service value have been developed forregional economic industrial and commercial develop-ment At the same time Jingjiang as a port industrial cityhas vigorously promoted development along the river and

joint development across the river As a result the ecologicalenvironment has been destroyed 3erefore the 90 ad-ministrative villages with low index values of ecologicalenvironmental function were distributed in the industrialareas close to the urban area and along the river

515 Social Security Function 3e villages with high indexvalues of social security function were mainly located in theperiphery of towns and areas with a stronger agriculturalproduction function and their distribution was slightlyscattered Among them there were 11 administrative vil-lages in the higher-value area and 44 in the high-value areaIn this type villages with strong agricultural productionfunctions that rely on local agriculture for development hadrelatively complete social service systems such as health careand pensions Villages adjacent to the urban area can alsorely on the urban social service system due to the closeurban-rural connection 3e 55 administrative villages withweak social security functions were mainly located in theindustrial parks of Xinqiao town and Gushan town Due tothe vigorous development of industry in these regions theyhave employed a substantial number of nonindigenouspeople resulting in a low level of average social services anda low index value for the social security function

52 Recognition of Functional Combinations 3e dominantfunctions and the inferior functions were identified by themethod mentioned above And if there were multiple ad-vantageous functions the strongest function was selectedConversely if there are multiple inferior functions thefunction with the lowest index value was selected If therewas a situation where there were 4 or 5 dominant functionsthe area was determined to ldquointegrated developmentrdquo 3erest were named according to the form of ldquodominantfunctions-inferior functionsrdquo Among them because ldquoAPF-oriented-NPF-laggedrdquo and ldquoNPF-oriented-APF-laggedrdquowere separately distributed in the northwest and southwestother inferior functions were identified as alternatives tomaintain the effectiveness of the type identification Con-sidering the necessity of the coordinated development ofsocial security and the living functions the ldquoEEF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-ented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo typeswere merged Ultimately 17 types of functional combina-tions were identified to place emphasis on highlighting thefunctional characteristics of each unit and obtain a com-prehensive multifunctional pattern of rural areas in Jingjiangcity (see Figure 6)

6 Discussion

61 Targeted Rural Development Paths Oriented by BalancedDevelopment 3e types of rural multifunction combina-tions reflect the current development level of functions ineach village 3ereupon the identification of rural multi-function combinations can serve to locate the village ac-curately [49] and to find strengths and weaknesses Based onthe principle of balanced development for rural

Complexity 9

multifunction this study analysed the identified multi-function combinations and divided the future developmentof rural areas into 5 types according to the number andcombination of dominant functions and inferior function inthe villages Corresponding development paths were pro-posed at the same time (see Table 3) Concretely we clas-sified villages with 4-5 dominant functions as the ldquointegrateddevelopmentrdquo those without inferior functions as ldquodomi-nant function breakthroughrdquo and those with both dominantand inferior functions as ldquoinferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo And if the villages had nodominant function but inferior functions they were clas-sified as ldquoinferior function enhancementrdquo3e villages whichhad no dominant function and their combination of ele-ments and resource characteristics cannot well support thedevelopment of the weakest functions were judged to beldquotransfer developmentrdquo Targeted rural development pathscan promote the scientific development of different villagesand in turn enhance the multifunctionality for villages

611 Integrated Development Areas with integrated de-velopment have no weak function and various ruralfunctions are relatively well-developed and balanced 3eseareas not only have natural resource endowments but alsocertain geographical advantages3erefore on the one handthis type of village should pursue the integrated developmentof agricultural and nonagricultural industries and reform theorganic structure of the rural industries On the other hand

based on the sound development of functions they shouldpay close attention to the quality of development to proceedtowards sustainable development 3e governance and errorcorrection mechanisms for the territorial space of theYangtze River Economic Zone established by Jingjiang cityproposed the concept of the Yangtze River coast and itssurrounding 5 kilometres Villages within 5 kilometres of theYangtze River coast and its periphery can place a moderateemphasis on industrial development

612 Dominant Function Breakthrough 3is type whichhas no undeveloped function is outstanding in a certainfunction In the future great attention should be paid tooptimizing the leading functions by this kind of villageldquoAPF-orientedrdquo villages are supposed to enhance the qualityof cultivated land for yield assurance And actively pro-moting rural land circulation to develop efficient large-scaleand modern agriculture is also an appropriate way Besidesthis type should take the endogenous development path suchas utilizing agricultural resources with outstanding localcomparative advantages to develop high-quality and char-acteristic products and services and to build personalizedand branded agriculture 3e construction of the bases forspecial agricultural and secondary products and the bases fortourism and leisure would also be an effective direction 3eldquoNPF-orientedrdquo villages were mainly distributed in thesouthwest of Jingjiang and have convenient water and landtransportation Among them the villages along the Yangtze

APF lagged

SSF lagged

EEF lagged

LF lagged

0 5km

Townno data

Town boundary

Yangtze riverAPF oriented-SSF lagged

APF oriented-EEF lagged

APF oriented

LF oriented

LF oriented-SSF lagged

EEF oriented

SSF oriented

SSF oriented-EEF lagged

SSF oriented-LF lagged

Integrated development

NPF oriented

NPF oriented-EEF lagged

NPF oriented-SSF lagged

Yangtze

River

N

Figure 6 Types of the rural multifunction combinations

10 Complexity

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

S Wj times Zij (4)

where S is the index value of the rural functions

423 Identification for Dominant Functions and InferiorFunctions 3e identification of functional types contributesto refined governance of rural areas and rational land usethereby enhancing the value of rural spatial functions [51]In this study the index values of each function werecompared with the sum of the mean and standard deviationof the corresponding function Combined with the char-acteristics of the collected data the judgement rule in Table 2was used to identify the dominant function and the inferiorfunctionswhere Sa is the index value of function a of the

unit Va is the average value of function a of all units and σa

is the standard deviation of function a of all units

5 Results

According to the above method the index values of theagricultural production nonagricultural production livingecological environmental and social security functions ofeach administrative village were calculated A scatter plotwas used for statistical analysis (see Figure 4) And ArcGIS100 software and the natural breaks method were also usedto divide each function into 5 levels higher high mediumlow and lower (see Figure 5)

In Figure 4 the horizontal axis is 160 administrativevillages sorted according to the variance of the index valuesand the vertical axis indicates the strength of the functions ofeach administrative village In general the agricultural

Xilai town

Jishi town

Xieqiao town

Xilai town

Gushan town

Jingcheng town

Shengci town

Dongxing town

Maqiao town

Xinqiao town

Yangtze

River

Wuxi city

Suzhou city

Taixing city

Nantong city

Huanghai Sea

Shandong Province

AnhuiProvince

Shanghai city

Zhejiang Province

Yangtze river

Study areaTown areaNo data area

HighwayRailway

0 5km

Nantong

Suzhou

Yancheng

LianyungangXuzhou

SuqianHuaian

Yangzhou

Nanjing

Changzhou

Taizhou

Zhenjiang

Wuxi

Jiangying bridge

Municipal boundaryCounty boundaryTown boundary

N

Figure 3 Location of the study region

6 Complexity

production function of rural areas in Jingjiang city wasslightly stronger than the nonagricultural productionfunction indicating that agriculture still occupied a domi-nant position And the living function was stronger than thesocial security function From the comparison between thefirst 40 villages and the last 40 villages it can be seen that

there were striking differences in the functional index valuesbetween villages that is different functions of the samevillage had significant gaps In particular there were largedifferences between the social security function and theecological environmental function which had the charac-teristic of polarization

51 Features of Spatial Differentiation of Rural Multifunction

511 Agricultural Production Function Overall the spatialdistribution of rural agricultural production function inJingjiang city has a significant variation (see Figure 5) It hada high degree of agglomeration and the strength of thisfunction showed a more obvious step distribution in thewestern region gradually decreasing from north to south3e higher-value and high-value areas of agricultural pro-duction function included 53 administrative villages con-centrated in Shengci town Maqiao town and Gushan townShengci town and Maqiao town are rich in high-qualitycultivated land and have superior water and soil resourcesAs the main development areas for the planting industry inthe city they concentrated on developing highly efficientagriculture Gushan town which has a flat terrain has goodagricultural production conditions 3ere are 60

Table 1 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Criterionlayer Indicator layer Connotation and calculation method of index Effect Weight

APF

Grain planting area 3e important indicator characterizing grain production capacity + 026913e proportion of agricultural

employees Agricultural employeestotal number of employees + 03775

Usable irrigation ponds andreservoirs Number of irrigation ponds and reservoirs available in the village + 01578

3e proportion of cultivated land Cultivated land areatotal land area + 01956

NPF

3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployees Degree of employed nonagriculture + 03903

Number of individual businesshouseholds

Number of individual industrial and commercial households in thevillage + 02272

Area of collective operatingconstruction land

Refers to the rural construction land with the nature of productionand management + 01983

3e proportion of land for mining Mining land areatotal land area + 01842

LF

Sanitation security Number of households with sanitary toilets + 02263

Tap water security Number of households with tap waternumber of the residentpopulation + 02356

Proportion of homestead Homestead areatotal land area + 05381

EEF Forest coverage Forestland areatotal land area [51] + 06825Ecosystem service value Refer to the research of Zhao et al [52] for calculation + 03175

SSF

Participation in medical insurance Number of participants in cooperative medical insurancenumber ofregistered permanent resident + 03003

Participation in social pensionplans

Number of participants in social pension plansnumber of registeredpermanent resident + 03155

Per capita library collection Library collectionnumber of the resident population + 03842

Table 2 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Condition Result(Sa(Va + σa))ge 08 Function a is the dominant function of the unit08gt (Sa(Va + σa))ge 05 Function a is the nondominant function of the unit05gt (Sa(Va + σa)) Function a is the inferior function of the unit

0010203040506070809

1

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

APFNPFLF

EEFSSF

Figure 4 Index value of rural multifunction in Jingjiang city in2017

Complexity 7

administrative villages in the lower-value and low-valueareas which are mainly located around urban areas Withthe advancement of urbanization this kind of area is affectedby urban radiation and has a high degree of land use de-velopment a shrinking proportion of cultivated land and adiminishing capacity to attract and absorb agriculturalworkers resulting in a weak agricultural productionfunction

512 Nonagricultural Production Function 3e nonagri-cultural production function of the city presented evidentspatial agglomeration characteristics which is generallyopposite to the agricultural production function 3e 51administrative villages with high levels of this function weremainly distributed in Xinqiao town Dongxing town andJingcheng town along the river indicating that the YangtzeRiver Economic Zone cities and towns were obvious drivers

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(a)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(b)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(c)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(d)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(e)

Figure 5 Spatial distribution of the rural function indexes in Jingjiang city in 2017 (a) APF (b) NPF (c) LF (d) EEF and (e) SSF

8 Complexity

for nonagricultural production Located in the southwest ofJingjiang city north of the Yangtze River Xinqiao town andDongxing town are the main deployment areas of the in-dustrial parks Xinqiao town is adjacent to the GuangjingExpressway and Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge in the eastDongxing town is an urban expansion area adjacent to theurban area As the seat of the main urban area Jingchengtown has Jiangyin Bridge which connects the area to Wuxicity 3is type of area which has convenient transportationis the main development area along the river and the mainconduit of industrial transfer in southern Jiangsu and it hada high proportion of secondary and tertiary industries and ahigh index value for the nonagricultural production func-tion 3e low-value and lower-value areas were mainlyconcentrated in the northwest with a total of 63 adminis-trative villages Such areas were less affected by urban ra-diation and the Yangtze River Economic Zone and they hadno economic or geographic conditions conducive to in-dustrial development 3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployment in these areas was relatively small leading to alow index value for the nonagricultural production function

513 Living Function Figure 5 shows that the index value ofthe living function in the city was not high 3e 31 ad-ministrative villages with higher index values were mainlyconcentrated around urban areas such as Jingcheng townXieqiao town and Xinqiao town 3ese villages have closeurban-rural links convenient transportation complete in-frastructure and public facilities a large number of em-ployment opportunities and convenient commutingmaking them the preferred residence for most residents 3espatial distribution of the villages with low index values ofthe living function was scattered 3ese 74 administrativevillages were mainly distributed in Maqiao town Gushantown Dongxing town and Xilai town Areas that are faraway from cities and towns have imperfect road systems andservice facilities and low index values of living functions

514 Ecological Environmental Function 3e ecologicalenvironmental function for most villages in the city wasweak 3e higher-value areas of this function were dis-tributed in areas with a strong agricultural productionfunction and the areas that were far from the urban mainlyincluding Shengci town Maqiao town Gushan town andDongxing town Among them Maqiao town and Gushantown are regarded as the important areas of ecologicalfunction Dongxing town which is the largest Cuiguan pearplanting base in Jingjiang has a well-developed plantingindustry 3e land development intensity in this type of areawas relatively low and the contribution to ecosystemconservation was high Jingjiang city mainly realized thecoordinated development of the whole cityrsquos economy andsociety through the economic growth point (urban area) andaxis (industrial zone along the river) Many types of landwith high ecosystem service value have been developed forregional economic industrial and commercial develop-ment At the same time Jingjiang as a port industrial cityhas vigorously promoted development along the river and

joint development across the river As a result the ecologicalenvironment has been destroyed 3erefore the 90 ad-ministrative villages with low index values of ecologicalenvironmental function were distributed in the industrialareas close to the urban area and along the river

515 Social Security Function 3e villages with high indexvalues of social security function were mainly located in theperiphery of towns and areas with a stronger agriculturalproduction function and their distribution was slightlyscattered Among them there were 11 administrative vil-lages in the higher-value area and 44 in the high-value areaIn this type villages with strong agricultural productionfunctions that rely on local agriculture for development hadrelatively complete social service systems such as health careand pensions Villages adjacent to the urban area can alsorely on the urban social service system due to the closeurban-rural connection 3e 55 administrative villages withweak social security functions were mainly located in theindustrial parks of Xinqiao town and Gushan town Due tothe vigorous development of industry in these regions theyhave employed a substantial number of nonindigenouspeople resulting in a low level of average social services anda low index value for the social security function

52 Recognition of Functional Combinations 3e dominantfunctions and the inferior functions were identified by themethod mentioned above And if there were multiple ad-vantageous functions the strongest function was selectedConversely if there are multiple inferior functions thefunction with the lowest index value was selected If therewas a situation where there were 4 or 5 dominant functionsthe area was determined to ldquointegrated developmentrdquo 3erest were named according to the form of ldquodominantfunctions-inferior functionsrdquo Among them because ldquoAPF-oriented-NPF-laggedrdquo and ldquoNPF-oriented-APF-laggedrdquowere separately distributed in the northwest and southwestother inferior functions were identified as alternatives tomaintain the effectiveness of the type identification Con-sidering the necessity of the coordinated development ofsocial security and the living functions the ldquoEEF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-ented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo typeswere merged Ultimately 17 types of functional combina-tions were identified to place emphasis on highlighting thefunctional characteristics of each unit and obtain a com-prehensive multifunctional pattern of rural areas in Jingjiangcity (see Figure 6)

6 Discussion

61 Targeted Rural Development Paths Oriented by BalancedDevelopment 3e types of rural multifunction combina-tions reflect the current development level of functions ineach village 3ereupon the identification of rural multi-function combinations can serve to locate the village ac-curately [49] and to find strengths and weaknesses Based onthe principle of balanced development for rural

Complexity 9

multifunction this study analysed the identified multi-function combinations and divided the future developmentof rural areas into 5 types according to the number andcombination of dominant functions and inferior function inthe villages Corresponding development paths were pro-posed at the same time (see Table 3) Concretely we clas-sified villages with 4-5 dominant functions as the ldquointegrateddevelopmentrdquo those without inferior functions as ldquodomi-nant function breakthroughrdquo and those with both dominantand inferior functions as ldquoinferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo And if the villages had nodominant function but inferior functions they were clas-sified as ldquoinferior function enhancementrdquo3e villages whichhad no dominant function and their combination of ele-ments and resource characteristics cannot well support thedevelopment of the weakest functions were judged to beldquotransfer developmentrdquo Targeted rural development pathscan promote the scientific development of different villagesand in turn enhance the multifunctionality for villages

611 Integrated Development Areas with integrated de-velopment have no weak function and various ruralfunctions are relatively well-developed and balanced 3eseareas not only have natural resource endowments but alsocertain geographical advantages3erefore on the one handthis type of village should pursue the integrated developmentof agricultural and nonagricultural industries and reform theorganic structure of the rural industries On the other hand

based on the sound development of functions they shouldpay close attention to the quality of development to proceedtowards sustainable development 3e governance and errorcorrection mechanisms for the territorial space of theYangtze River Economic Zone established by Jingjiang cityproposed the concept of the Yangtze River coast and itssurrounding 5 kilometres Villages within 5 kilometres of theYangtze River coast and its periphery can place a moderateemphasis on industrial development

612 Dominant Function Breakthrough 3is type whichhas no undeveloped function is outstanding in a certainfunction In the future great attention should be paid tooptimizing the leading functions by this kind of villageldquoAPF-orientedrdquo villages are supposed to enhance the qualityof cultivated land for yield assurance And actively pro-moting rural land circulation to develop efficient large-scaleand modern agriculture is also an appropriate way Besidesthis type should take the endogenous development path suchas utilizing agricultural resources with outstanding localcomparative advantages to develop high-quality and char-acteristic products and services and to build personalizedand branded agriculture 3e construction of the bases forspecial agricultural and secondary products and the bases fortourism and leisure would also be an effective direction 3eldquoNPF-orientedrdquo villages were mainly distributed in thesouthwest of Jingjiang and have convenient water and landtransportation Among them the villages along the Yangtze

APF lagged

SSF lagged

EEF lagged

LF lagged

0 5km

Townno data

Town boundary

Yangtze riverAPF oriented-SSF lagged

APF oriented-EEF lagged

APF oriented

LF oriented

LF oriented-SSF lagged

EEF oriented

SSF oriented

SSF oriented-EEF lagged

SSF oriented-LF lagged

Integrated development

NPF oriented

NPF oriented-EEF lagged

NPF oriented-SSF lagged

Yangtze

River

N

Figure 6 Types of the rural multifunction combinations

10 Complexity

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

production function of rural areas in Jingjiang city wasslightly stronger than the nonagricultural productionfunction indicating that agriculture still occupied a domi-nant position And the living function was stronger than thesocial security function From the comparison between thefirst 40 villages and the last 40 villages it can be seen that

there were striking differences in the functional index valuesbetween villages that is different functions of the samevillage had significant gaps In particular there were largedifferences between the social security function and theecological environmental function which had the charac-teristic of polarization

51 Features of Spatial Differentiation of Rural Multifunction

511 Agricultural Production Function Overall the spatialdistribution of rural agricultural production function inJingjiang city has a significant variation (see Figure 5) It hada high degree of agglomeration and the strength of thisfunction showed a more obvious step distribution in thewestern region gradually decreasing from north to south3e higher-value and high-value areas of agricultural pro-duction function included 53 administrative villages con-centrated in Shengci town Maqiao town and Gushan townShengci town and Maqiao town are rich in high-qualitycultivated land and have superior water and soil resourcesAs the main development areas for the planting industry inthe city they concentrated on developing highly efficientagriculture Gushan town which has a flat terrain has goodagricultural production conditions 3ere are 60

Table 1 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Criterionlayer Indicator layer Connotation and calculation method of index Effect Weight

APF

Grain planting area 3e important indicator characterizing grain production capacity + 026913e proportion of agricultural

employees Agricultural employeestotal number of employees + 03775

Usable irrigation ponds andreservoirs Number of irrigation ponds and reservoirs available in the village + 01578

3e proportion of cultivated land Cultivated land areatotal land area + 01956

NPF

3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployees Degree of employed nonagriculture + 03903

Number of individual businesshouseholds

Number of individual industrial and commercial households in thevillage + 02272

Area of collective operatingconstruction land

Refers to the rural construction land with the nature of productionand management + 01983

3e proportion of land for mining Mining land areatotal land area + 01842

LF

Sanitation security Number of households with sanitary toilets + 02263

Tap water security Number of households with tap waternumber of the residentpopulation + 02356

Proportion of homestead Homestead areatotal land area + 05381

EEF Forest coverage Forestland areatotal land area [51] + 06825Ecosystem service value Refer to the research of Zhao et al [52] for calculation + 03175

SSF

Participation in medical insurance Number of participants in cooperative medical insurancenumber ofregistered permanent resident + 03003

Participation in social pensionplans

Number of participants in social pension plansnumber of registeredpermanent resident + 03155

Per capita library collection Library collectionnumber of the resident population + 03842

Table 2 Evaluation index system for rural multifunction

Condition Result(Sa(Va + σa))ge 08 Function a is the dominant function of the unit08gt (Sa(Va + σa))ge 05 Function a is the nondominant function of the unit05gt (Sa(Va + σa)) Function a is the inferior function of the unit

0010203040506070809

1

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

APFNPFLF

EEFSSF

Figure 4 Index value of rural multifunction in Jingjiang city in2017

Complexity 7

administrative villages in the lower-value and low-valueareas which are mainly located around urban areas Withthe advancement of urbanization this kind of area is affectedby urban radiation and has a high degree of land use de-velopment a shrinking proportion of cultivated land and adiminishing capacity to attract and absorb agriculturalworkers resulting in a weak agricultural productionfunction

512 Nonagricultural Production Function 3e nonagri-cultural production function of the city presented evidentspatial agglomeration characteristics which is generallyopposite to the agricultural production function 3e 51administrative villages with high levels of this function weremainly distributed in Xinqiao town Dongxing town andJingcheng town along the river indicating that the YangtzeRiver Economic Zone cities and towns were obvious drivers

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(a)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(b)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(c)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(d)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(e)

Figure 5 Spatial distribution of the rural function indexes in Jingjiang city in 2017 (a) APF (b) NPF (c) LF (d) EEF and (e) SSF

8 Complexity

for nonagricultural production Located in the southwest ofJingjiang city north of the Yangtze River Xinqiao town andDongxing town are the main deployment areas of the in-dustrial parks Xinqiao town is adjacent to the GuangjingExpressway and Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge in the eastDongxing town is an urban expansion area adjacent to theurban area As the seat of the main urban area Jingchengtown has Jiangyin Bridge which connects the area to Wuxicity 3is type of area which has convenient transportationis the main development area along the river and the mainconduit of industrial transfer in southern Jiangsu and it hada high proportion of secondary and tertiary industries and ahigh index value for the nonagricultural production func-tion 3e low-value and lower-value areas were mainlyconcentrated in the northwest with a total of 63 adminis-trative villages Such areas were less affected by urban ra-diation and the Yangtze River Economic Zone and they hadno economic or geographic conditions conducive to in-dustrial development 3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployment in these areas was relatively small leading to alow index value for the nonagricultural production function

513 Living Function Figure 5 shows that the index value ofthe living function in the city was not high 3e 31 ad-ministrative villages with higher index values were mainlyconcentrated around urban areas such as Jingcheng townXieqiao town and Xinqiao town 3ese villages have closeurban-rural links convenient transportation complete in-frastructure and public facilities a large number of em-ployment opportunities and convenient commutingmaking them the preferred residence for most residents 3espatial distribution of the villages with low index values ofthe living function was scattered 3ese 74 administrativevillages were mainly distributed in Maqiao town Gushantown Dongxing town and Xilai town Areas that are faraway from cities and towns have imperfect road systems andservice facilities and low index values of living functions

514 Ecological Environmental Function 3e ecologicalenvironmental function for most villages in the city wasweak 3e higher-value areas of this function were dis-tributed in areas with a strong agricultural productionfunction and the areas that were far from the urban mainlyincluding Shengci town Maqiao town Gushan town andDongxing town Among them Maqiao town and Gushantown are regarded as the important areas of ecologicalfunction Dongxing town which is the largest Cuiguan pearplanting base in Jingjiang has a well-developed plantingindustry 3e land development intensity in this type of areawas relatively low and the contribution to ecosystemconservation was high Jingjiang city mainly realized thecoordinated development of the whole cityrsquos economy andsociety through the economic growth point (urban area) andaxis (industrial zone along the river) Many types of landwith high ecosystem service value have been developed forregional economic industrial and commercial develop-ment At the same time Jingjiang as a port industrial cityhas vigorously promoted development along the river and

joint development across the river As a result the ecologicalenvironment has been destroyed 3erefore the 90 ad-ministrative villages with low index values of ecologicalenvironmental function were distributed in the industrialareas close to the urban area and along the river

515 Social Security Function 3e villages with high indexvalues of social security function were mainly located in theperiphery of towns and areas with a stronger agriculturalproduction function and their distribution was slightlyscattered Among them there were 11 administrative vil-lages in the higher-value area and 44 in the high-value areaIn this type villages with strong agricultural productionfunctions that rely on local agriculture for development hadrelatively complete social service systems such as health careand pensions Villages adjacent to the urban area can alsorely on the urban social service system due to the closeurban-rural connection 3e 55 administrative villages withweak social security functions were mainly located in theindustrial parks of Xinqiao town and Gushan town Due tothe vigorous development of industry in these regions theyhave employed a substantial number of nonindigenouspeople resulting in a low level of average social services anda low index value for the social security function

52 Recognition of Functional Combinations 3e dominantfunctions and the inferior functions were identified by themethod mentioned above And if there were multiple ad-vantageous functions the strongest function was selectedConversely if there are multiple inferior functions thefunction with the lowest index value was selected If therewas a situation where there were 4 or 5 dominant functionsthe area was determined to ldquointegrated developmentrdquo 3erest were named according to the form of ldquodominantfunctions-inferior functionsrdquo Among them because ldquoAPF-oriented-NPF-laggedrdquo and ldquoNPF-oriented-APF-laggedrdquowere separately distributed in the northwest and southwestother inferior functions were identified as alternatives tomaintain the effectiveness of the type identification Con-sidering the necessity of the coordinated development ofsocial security and the living functions the ldquoEEF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-ented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo typeswere merged Ultimately 17 types of functional combina-tions were identified to place emphasis on highlighting thefunctional characteristics of each unit and obtain a com-prehensive multifunctional pattern of rural areas in Jingjiangcity (see Figure 6)

6 Discussion

61 Targeted Rural Development Paths Oriented by BalancedDevelopment 3e types of rural multifunction combina-tions reflect the current development level of functions ineach village 3ereupon the identification of rural multi-function combinations can serve to locate the village ac-curately [49] and to find strengths and weaknesses Based onthe principle of balanced development for rural

Complexity 9

multifunction this study analysed the identified multi-function combinations and divided the future developmentof rural areas into 5 types according to the number andcombination of dominant functions and inferior function inthe villages Corresponding development paths were pro-posed at the same time (see Table 3) Concretely we clas-sified villages with 4-5 dominant functions as the ldquointegrateddevelopmentrdquo those without inferior functions as ldquodomi-nant function breakthroughrdquo and those with both dominantand inferior functions as ldquoinferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo And if the villages had nodominant function but inferior functions they were clas-sified as ldquoinferior function enhancementrdquo3e villages whichhad no dominant function and their combination of ele-ments and resource characteristics cannot well support thedevelopment of the weakest functions were judged to beldquotransfer developmentrdquo Targeted rural development pathscan promote the scientific development of different villagesand in turn enhance the multifunctionality for villages

611 Integrated Development Areas with integrated de-velopment have no weak function and various ruralfunctions are relatively well-developed and balanced 3eseareas not only have natural resource endowments but alsocertain geographical advantages3erefore on the one handthis type of village should pursue the integrated developmentof agricultural and nonagricultural industries and reform theorganic structure of the rural industries On the other hand

based on the sound development of functions they shouldpay close attention to the quality of development to proceedtowards sustainable development 3e governance and errorcorrection mechanisms for the territorial space of theYangtze River Economic Zone established by Jingjiang cityproposed the concept of the Yangtze River coast and itssurrounding 5 kilometres Villages within 5 kilometres of theYangtze River coast and its periphery can place a moderateemphasis on industrial development

612 Dominant Function Breakthrough 3is type whichhas no undeveloped function is outstanding in a certainfunction In the future great attention should be paid tooptimizing the leading functions by this kind of villageldquoAPF-orientedrdquo villages are supposed to enhance the qualityof cultivated land for yield assurance And actively pro-moting rural land circulation to develop efficient large-scaleand modern agriculture is also an appropriate way Besidesthis type should take the endogenous development path suchas utilizing agricultural resources with outstanding localcomparative advantages to develop high-quality and char-acteristic products and services and to build personalizedand branded agriculture 3e construction of the bases forspecial agricultural and secondary products and the bases fortourism and leisure would also be an effective direction 3eldquoNPF-orientedrdquo villages were mainly distributed in thesouthwest of Jingjiang and have convenient water and landtransportation Among them the villages along the Yangtze

APF lagged

SSF lagged

EEF lagged

LF lagged

0 5km

Townno data

Town boundary

Yangtze riverAPF oriented-SSF lagged

APF oriented-EEF lagged

APF oriented

LF oriented

LF oriented-SSF lagged

EEF oriented

SSF oriented

SSF oriented-EEF lagged

SSF oriented-LF lagged

Integrated development

NPF oriented

NPF oriented-EEF lagged

NPF oriented-SSF lagged

Yangtze

River

N

Figure 6 Types of the rural multifunction combinations

10 Complexity

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

administrative villages in the lower-value and low-valueareas which are mainly located around urban areas Withthe advancement of urbanization this kind of area is affectedby urban radiation and has a high degree of land use de-velopment a shrinking proportion of cultivated land and adiminishing capacity to attract and absorb agriculturalworkers resulting in a weak agricultural productionfunction

512 Nonagricultural Production Function 3e nonagri-cultural production function of the city presented evidentspatial agglomeration characteristics which is generallyopposite to the agricultural production function 3e 51administrative villages with high levels of this function weremainly distributed in Xinqiao town Dongxing town andJingcheng town along the river indicating that the YangtzeRiver Economic Zone cities and towns were obvious drivers

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(a)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(b)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(c)

Yangtze

River

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(d)

River

Yangtze

Yangtze river

HighHigher

Townno data

LowLower

Medium

0 5kmN

(e)

Figure 5 Spatial distribution of the rural function indexes in Jingjiang city in 2017 (a) APF (b) NPF (c) LF (d) EEF and (e) SSF

8 Complexity

for nonagricultural production Located in the southwest ofJingjiang city north of the Yangtze River Xinqiao town andDongxing town are the main deployment areas of the in-dustrial parks Xinqiao town is adjacent to the GuangjingExpressway and Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge in the eastDongxing town is an urban expansion area adjacent to theurban area As the seat of the main urban area Jingchengtown has Jiangyin Bridge which connects the area to Wuxicity 3is type of area which has convenient transportationis the main development area along the river and the mainconduit of industrial transfer in southern Jiangsu and it hada high proportion of secondary and tertiary industries and ahigh index value for the nonagricultural production func-tion 3e low-value and lower-value areas were mainlyconcentrated in the northwest with a total of 63 adminis-trative villages Such areas were less affected by urban ra-diation and the Yangtze River Economic Zone and they hadno economic or geographic conditions conducive to in-dustrial development 3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployment in these areas was relatively small leading to alow index value for the nonagricultural production function

513 Living Function Figure 5 shows that the index value ofthe living function in the city was not high 3e 31 ad-ministrative villages with higher index values were mainlyconcentrated around urban areas such as Jingcheng townXieqiao town and Xinqiao town 3ese villages have closeurban-rural links convenient transportation complete in-frastructure and public facilities a large number of em-ployment opportunities and convenient commutingmaking them the preferred residence for most residents 3espatial distribution of the villages with low index values ofthe living function was scattered 3ese 74 administrativevillages were mainly distributed in Maqiao town Gushantown Dongxing town and Xilai town Areas that are faraway from cities and towns have imperfect road systems andservice facilities and low index values of living functions

514 Ecological Environmental Function 3e ecologicalenvironmental function for most villages in the city wasweak 3e higher-value areas of this function were dis-tributed in areas with a strong agricultural productionfunction and the areas that were far from the urban mainlyincluding Shengci town Maqiao town Gushan town andDongxing town Among them Maqiao town and Gushantown are regarded as the important areas of ecologicalfunction Dongxing town which is the largest Cuiguan pearplanting base in Jingjiang has a well-developed plantingindustry 3e land development intensity in this type of areawas relatively low and the contribution to ecosystemconservation was high Jingjiang city mainly realized thecoordinated development of the whole cityrsquos economy andsociety through the economic growth point (urban area) andaxis (industrial zone along the river) Many types of landwith high ecosystem service value have been developed forregional economic industrial and commercial develop-ment At the same time Jingjiang as a port industrial cityhas vigorously promoted development along the river and

joint development across the river As a result the ecologicalenvironment has been destroyed 3erefore the 90 ad-ministrative villages with low index values of ecologicalenvironmental function were distributed in the industrialareas close to the urban area and along the river

515 Social Security Function 3e villages with high indexvalues of social security function were mainly located in theperiphery of towns and areas with a stronger agriculturalproduction function and their distribution was slightlyscattered Among them there were 11 administrative vil-lages in the higher-value area and 44 in the high-value areaIn this type villages with strong agricultural productionfunctions that rely on local agriculture for development hadrelatively complete social service systems such as health careand pensions Villages adjacent to the urban area can alsorely on the urban social service system due to the closeurban-rural connection 3e 55 administrative villages withweak social security functions were mainly located in theindustrial parks of Xinqiao town and Gushan town Due tothe vigorous development of industry in these regions theyhave employed a substantial number of nonindigenouspeople resulting in a low level of average social services anda low index value for the social security function

52 Recognition of Functional Combinations 3e dominantfunctions and the inferior functions were identified by themethod mentioned above And if there were multiple ad-vantageous functions the strongest function was selectedConversely if there are multiple inferior functions thefunction with the lowest index value was selected If therewas a situation where there were 4 or 5 dominant functionsthe area was determined to ldquointegrated developmentrdquo 3erest were named according to the form of ldquodominantfunctions-inferior functionsrdquo Among them because ldquoAPF-oriented-NPF-laggedrdquo and ldquoNPF-oriented-APF-laggedrdquowere separately distributed in the northwest and southwestother inferior functions were identified as alternatives tomaintain the effectiveness of the type identification Con-sidering the necessity of the coordinated development ofsocial security and the living functions the ldquoEEF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-ented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo typeswere merged Ultimately 17 types of functional combina-tions were identified to place emphasis on highlighting thefunctional characteristics of each unit and obtain a com-prehensive multifunctional pattern of rural areas in Jingjiangcity (see Figure 6)

6 Discussion

61 Targeted Rural Development Paths Oriented by BalancedDevelopment 3e types of rural multifunction combina-tions reflect the current development level of functions ineach village 3ereupon the identification of rural multi-function combinations can serve to locate the village ac-curately [49] and to find strengths and weaknesses Based onthe principle of balanced development for rural

Complexity 9

multifunction this study analysed the identified multi-function combinations and divided the future developmentof rural areas into 5 types according to the number andcombination of dominant functions and inferior function inthe villages Corresponding development paths were pro-posed at the same time (see Table 3) Concretely we clas-sified villages with 4-5 dominant functions as the ldquointegrateddevelopmentrdquo those without inferior functions as ldquodomi-nant function breakthroughrdquo and those with both dominantand inferior functions as ldquoinferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo And if the villages had nodominant function but inferior functions they were clas-sified as ldquoinferior function enhancementrdquo3e villages whichhad no dominant function and their combination of ele-ments and resource characteristics cannot well support thedevelopment of the weakest functions were judged to beldquotransfer developmentrdquo Targeted rural development pathscan promote the scientific development of different villagesand in turn enhance the multifunctionality for villages

611 Integrated Development Areas with integrated de-velopment have no weak function and various ruralfunctions are relatively well-developed and balanced 3eseareas not only have natural resource endowments but alsocertain geographical advantages3erefore on the one handthis type of village should pursue the integrated developmentof agricultural and nonagricultural industries and reform theorganic structure of the rural industries On the other hand

based on the sound development of functions they shouldpay close attention to the quality of development to proceedtowards sustainable development 3e governance and errorcorrection mechanisms for the territorial space of theYangtze River Economic Zone established by Jingjiang cityproposed the concept of the Yangtze River coast and itssurrounding 5 kilometres Villages within 5 kilometres of theYangtze River coast and its periphery can place a moderateemphasis on industrial development

612 Dominant Function Breakthrough 3is type whichhas no undeveloped function is outstanding in a certainfunction In the future great attention should be paid tooptimizing the leading functions by this kind of villageldquoAPF-orientedrdquo villages are supposed to enhance the qualityof cultivated land for yield assurance And actively pro-moting rural land circulation to develop efficient large-scaleand modern agriculture is also an appropriate way Besidesthis type should take the endogenous development path suchas utilizing agricultural resources with outstanding localcomparative advantages to develop high-quality and char-acteristic products and services and to build personalizedand branded agriculture 3e construction of the bases forspecial agricultural and secondary products and the bases fortourism and leisure would also be an effective direction 3eldquoNPF-orientedrdquo villages were mainly distributed in thesouthwest of Jingjiang and have convenient water and landtransportation Among them the villages along the Yangtze

APF lagged

SSF lagged

EEF lagged

LF lagged

0 5km

Townno data

Town boundary

Yangtze riverAPF oriented-SSF lagged

APF oriented-EEF lagged

APF oriented

LF oriented

LF oriented-SSF lagged

EEF oriented

SSF oriented

SSF oriented-EEF lagged

SSF oriented-LF lagged

Integrated development

NPF oriented

NPF oriented-EEF lagged

NPF oriented-SSF lagged

Yangtze

River

N

Figure 6 Types of the rural multifunction combinations

10 Complexity

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

for nonagricultural production Located in the southwest ofJingjiang city north of the Yangtze River Xinqiao town andDongxing town are the main deployment areas of the in-dustrial parks Xinqiao town is adjacent to the GuangjingExpressway and Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge in the eastDongxing town is an urban expansion area adjacent to theurban area As the seat of the main urban area Jingchengtown has Jiangyin Bridge which connects the area to Wuxicity 3is type of area which has convenient transportationis the main development area along the river and the mainconduit of industrial transfer in southern Jiangsu and it hada high proportion of secondary and tertiary industries and ahigh index value for the nonagricultural production func-tion 3e low-value and lower-value areas were mainlyconcentrated in the northwest with a total of 63 adminis-trative villages Such areas were less affected by urban ra-diation and the Yangtze River Economic Zone and they hadno economic or geographic conditions conducive to in-dustrial development 3e proportion of nonagriculturalemployment in these areas was relatively small leading to alow index value for the nonagricultural production function

513 Living Function Figure 5 shows that the index value ofthe living function in the city was not high 3e 31 ad-ministrative villages with higher index values were mainlyconcentrated around urban areas such as Jingcheng townXieqiao town and Xinqiao town 3ese villages have closeurban-rural links convenient transportation complete in-frastructure and public facilities a large number of em-ployment opportunities and convenient commutingmaking them the preferred residence for most residents 3espatial distribution of the villages with low index values ofthe living function was scattered 3ese 74 administrativevillages were mainly distributed in Maqiao town Gushantown Dongxing town and Xilai town Areas that are faraway from cities and towns have imperfect road systems andservice facilities and low index values of living functions

514 Ecological Environmental Function 3e ecologicalenvironmental function for most villages in the city wasweak 3e higher-value areas of this function were dis-tributed in areas with a strong agricultural productionfunction and the areas that were far from the urban mainlyincluding Shengci town Maqiao town Gushan town andDongxing town Among them Maqiao town and Gushantown are regarded as the important areas of ecologicalfunction Dongxing town which is the largest Cuiguan pearplanting base in Jingjiang has a well-developed plantingindustry 3e land development intensity in this type of areawas relatively low and the contribution to ecosystemconservation was high Jingjiang city mainly realized thecoordinated development of the whole cityrsquos economy andsociety through the economic growth point (urban area) andaxis (industrial zone along the river) Many types of landwith high ecosystem service value have been developed forregional economic industrial and commercial develop-ment At the same time Jingjiang as a port industrial cityhas vigorously promoted development along the river and

joint development across the river As a result the ecologicalenvironment has been destroyed 3erefore the 90 ad-ministrative villages with low index values of ecologicalenvironmental function were distributed in the industrialareas close to the urban area and along the river

515 Social Security Function 3e villages with high indexvalues of social security function were mainly located in theperiphery of towns and areas with a stronger agriculturalproduction function and their distribution was slightlyscattered Among them there were 11 administrative vil-lages in the higher-value area and 44 in the high-value areaIn this type villages with strong agricultural productionfunctions that rely on local agriculture for development hadrelatively complete social service systems such as health careand pensions Villages adjacent to the urban area can alsorely on the urban social service system due to the closeurban-rural connection 3e 55 administrative villages withweak social security functions were mainly located in theindustrial parks of Xinqiao town and Gushan town Due tothe vigorous development of industry in these regions theyhave employed a substantial number of nonindigenouspeople resulting in a low level of average social services anda low index value for the social security function

52 Recognition of Functional Combinations 3e dominantfunctions and the inferior functions were identified by themethod mentioned above And if there were multiple ad-vantageous functions the strongest function was selectedConversely if there are multiple inferior functions thefunction with the lowest index value was selected If therewas a situation where there were 4 or 5 dominant functionsthe area was determined to ldquointegrated developmentrdquo 3erest were named according to the form of ldquodominantfunctions-inferior functionsrdquo Among them because ldquoAPF-oriented-NPF-laggedrdquo and ldquoNPF-oriented-APF-laggedrdquowere separately distributed in the northwest and southwestother inferior functions were identified as alternatives tomaintain the effectiveness of the type identification Con-sidering the necessity of the coordinated development ofsocial security and the living functions the ldquoEEF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-ented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo typeswere merged Ultimately 17 types of functional combina-tions were identified to place emphasis on highlighting thefunctional characteristics of each unit and obtain a com-prehensive multifunctional pattern of rural areas in Jingjiangcity (see Figure 6)

6 Discussion

61 Targeted Rural Development Paths Oriented by BalancedDevelopment 3e types of rural multifunction combina-tions reflect the current development level of functions ineach village 3ereupon the identification of rural multi-function combinations can serve to locate the village ac-curately [49] and to find strengths and weaknesses Based onthe principle of balanced development for rural

Complexity 9

multifunction this study analysed the identified multi-function combinations and divided the future developmentof rural areas into 5 types according to the number andcombination of dominant functions and inferior function inthe villages Corresponding development paths were pro-posed at the same time (see Table 3) Concretely we clas-sified villages with 4-5 dominant functions as the ldquointegrateddevelopmentrdquo those without inferior functions as ldquodomi-nant function breakthroughrdquo and those with both dominantand inferior functions as ldquoinferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo And if the villages had nodominant function but inferior functions they were clas-sified as ldquoinferior function enhancementrdquo3e villages whichhad no dominant function and their combination of ele-ments and resource characteristics cannot well support thedevelopment of the weakest functions were judged to beldquotransfer developmentrdquo Targeted rural development pathscan promote the scientific development of different villagesand in turn enhance the multifunctionality for villages

611 Integrated Development Areas with integrated de-velopment have no weak function and various ruralfunctions are relatively well-developed and balanced 3eseareas not only have natural resource endowments but alsocertain geographical advantages3erefore on the one handthis type of village should pursue the integrated developmentof agricultural and nonagricultural industries and reform theorganic structure of the rural industries On the other hand

based on the sound development of functions they shouldpay close attention to the quality of development to proceedtowards sustainable development 3e governance and errorcorrection mechanisms for the territorial space of theYangtze River Economic Zone established by Jingjiang cityproposed the concept of the Yangtze River coast and itssurrounding 5 kilometres Villages within 5 kilometres of theYangtze River coast and its periphery can place a moderateemphasis on industrial development

612 Dominant Function Breakthrough 3is type whichhas no undeveloped function is outstanding in a certainfunction In the future great attention should be paid tooptimizing the leading functions by this kind of villageldquoAPF-orientedrdquo villages are supposed to enhance the qualityof cultivated land for yield assurance And actively pro-moting rural land circulation to develop efficient large-scaleand modern agriculture is also an appropriate way Besidesthis type should take the endogenous development path suchas utilizing agricultural resources with outstanding localcomparative advantages to develop high-quality and char-acteristic products and services and to build personalizedand branded agriculture 3e construction of the bases forspecial agricultural and secondary products and the bases fortourism and leisure would also be an effective direction 3eldquoNPF-orientedrdquo villages were mainly distributed in thesouthwest of Jingjiang and have convenient water and landtransportation Among them the villages along the Yangtze

APF lagged

SSF lagged

EEF lagged

LF lagged

0 5km

Townno data

Town boundary

Yangtze riverAPF oriented-SSF lagged

APF oriented-EEF lagged

APF oriented

LF oriented

LF oriented-SSF lagged

EEF oriented

SSF oriented

SSF oriented-EEF lagged

SSF oriented-LF lagged

Integrated development

NPF oriented

NPF oriented-EEF lagged

NPF oriented-SSF lagged

Yangtze

River

N

Figure 6 Types of the rural multifunction combinations

10 Complexity

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

multifunction this study analysed the identified multi-function combinations and divided the future developmentof rural areas into 5 types according to the number andcombination of dominant functions and inferior function inthe villages Corresponding development paths were pro-posed at the same time (see Table 3) Concretely we clas-sified villages with 4-5 dominant functions as the ldquointegrateddevelopmentrdquo those without inferior functions as ldquodomi-nant function breakthroughrdquo and those with both dominantand inferior functions as ldquoinferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo And if the villages had nodominant function but inferior functions they were clas-sified as ldquoinferior function enhancementrdquo3e villages whichhad no dominant function and their combination of ele-ments and resource characteristics cannot well support thedevelopment of the weakest functions were judged to beldquotransfer developmentrdquo Targeted rural development pathscan promote the scientific development of different villagesand in turn enhance the multifunctionality for villages

611 Integrated Development Areas with integrated de-velopment have no weak function and various ruralfunctions are relatively well-developed and balanced 3eseareas not only have natural resource endowments but alsocertain geographical advantages3erefore on the one handthis type of village should pursue the integrated developmentof agricultural and nonagricultural industries and reform theorganic structure of the rural industries On the other hand

based on the sound development of functions they shouldpay close attention to the quality of development to proceedtowards sustainable development 3e governance and errorcorrection mechanisms for the territorial space of theYangtze River Economic Zone established by Jingjiang cityproposed the concept of the Yangtze River coast and itssurrounding 5 kilometres Villages within 5 kilometres of theYangtze River coast and its periphery can place a moderateemphasis on industrial development

612 Dominant Function Breakthrough 3is type whichhas no undeveloped function is outstanding in a certainfunction In the future great attention should be paid tooptimizing the leading functions by this kind of villageldquoAPF-orientedrdquo villages are supposed to enhance the qualityof cultivated land for yield assurance And actively pro-moting rural land circulation to develop efficient large-scaleand modern agriculture is also an appropriate way Besidesthis type should take the endogenous development path suchas utilizing agricultural resources with outstanding localcomparative advantages to develop high-quality and char-acteristic products and services and to build personalizedand branded agriculture 3e construction of the bases forspecial agricultural and secondary products and the bases fortourism and leisure would also be an effective direction 3eldquoNPF-orientedrdquo villages were mainly distributed in thesouthwest of Jingjiang and have convenient water and landtransportation Among them the villages along the Yangtze

APF lagged

SSF lagged

EEF lagged

LF lagged

0 5km

Townno data

Town boundary

Yangtze riverAPF oriented-SSF lagged

APF oriented-EEF lagged

APF oriented

LF oriented

LF oriented-SSF lagged

EEF oriented

SSF oriented

SSF oriented-EEF lagged

SSF oriented-LF lagged

Integrated development

NPF oriented

NPF oriented-EEF lagged

NPF oriented-SSF lagged

Yangtze

River

N

Figure 6 Types of the rural multifunction combinations

10 Complexity

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

River should raise the access standards for enterprises andthe efficiency of shoreline utilization 3e areas aroundtowns can better develop local nonagricultural industriesand tap into the potential for the rural market to realize theorganic integration of urban and rural areas 3e economicdevelopment levels and accessibility are still the main factorsaffecting the development of ldquoLF-orientedrdquo and ldquoSSF-ori-entedrdquo villages 3is type should raise the living and socialsecurity to a higher level by revitalizing the available con-struction land and building the ldquofour large networksrdquonamely road networks water supply networks garbage andsewage collection treatment networks education networksand medical networks 3e era of ecological resources as animportant carrier of wealth has arrived ldquoEEF-orientedrdquovillages should actively build ldquoeco-townsrdquo and develop eco-tourism on the premise of not damaging the ecologicalenvironment to show the local ecological value and partlytransform the ecological resources into economicadvantages

613 Inferior Function Development with DominantFunction 3is development type includes 7 combinations(see Table 3) 3e rural functions of this type developed in apolarized manner 3erefore it is necessary to consolidatethe advantages and adhere to the problem orientation tostrengthen the weaknesses ldquoSSF-oriented-LF-laggedrdquo andldquoLF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages could learn from eachother to coordinate the development of the living and socialsecurity functions ldquoAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villagesshould improve social security services and realize the fullcoverage of rural areas under agricultural development inthe future while ldquoNPF-oriented-SSF-laggedrdquo villages shouldenhance the regional social security function depend onnonagricultural development and focus on social securitywork for part-time workers ldquoAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should strengthen ecological protection and pro-mote the integrated development of agriculture and ecology3e different management and control strategies should beimplemented in the ldquoNPF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo villages3e areas within 5 kilometres of the coastline should guide

the environmentally friendly development of enterprises andrealize the gradual withdrawal of high-pollution enterpriseswhile the rest completely ban high-pollution enterprises3eldquoSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquo and ldquoLF-oriented-EEF-laggedrdquovillages should increase the cost for ecological restorationand environmental governance to improve the quality ofhuman settlements

614 Inferior Function Enhancement 3is type of villagehas no superior function but has a low overall developmentlevel 3ey were mainly distributed in the east of Jingjiang itincludes four combination types ldquoAPF-laggedrdquo ldquoLF-lag-gedrdquo ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo and ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages 3e futuredevelopment of this type ought to focus on identifying theleast developed function and strengthening it ldquoLF-laggedrdquoand ldquoSSF-laggedrdquo villages should highlight the regionaladvantages to promote weak functions under nonagricul-tural development 3e ldquoEEF-laggedrdquo villages should putecological safety first increase ecological environmentalprotection and make a point of enhancing regional eco-logical environmental function

615 Transfer Development 3is type of village has nosuperior function and do not have suitable conditions for theweakest function So this type ought to develop anotherfunction to achieve progress Because the ldquoAPF-laggedrdquovillages are distributed in small quantities along the YangtzeRiver and close to towns and have high levels of economicdevelopment and extremely convenient transportation theyshould highlight the advantages of the nonagriculturalproduction function to improve the comprehensive value ofrural areas

62 Balanced Development of Rural Multifunction and Sus-tainable Development 3e 2030 Agenda for SustainableDevelopment which represents a shared commitment byUNmember states to address development challenges in thenational context proposes 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) [55 56] 3e diversification of rural functionsis an inevitable requirement for respecting the laws of nature

Table 3 Division of development types based on rural multifunction

Type of rural development Type of rural multifunction Development path

Integrated development Integrated developmentPromote the integration of industry and agricultureand value the quality of development for steady

progress

Dominant functionbreakthrough

APF-orientedNPF-orientedLF-orientedEEF-orientedSSF-oriented

Great attention should be paid to optimize the leadingfunctions and realize differentiated development by

region

Inferior functiondevelopment withdominant function

SSF-oriented-LF-laggedSSF-oriented-EEF-laggedLF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-SSF-laggedAPF-oriented-EEF-laggedNPF-oriented-EEF-

laggedNPF-oriented-SSF-lagged

Consolidate the advantages and adhere to the problemorientation to strengthen the inferior function in

virtue of the dominant function

Inferior functionenhancement SSF-laggedLF-laggedEEF-lagged

Identify the least developed function to strengtheningit or improve the function that best fits the conditions

of the village itself

Transfer development APF-lagged Develop another function supported by localadvantages for a replacement to achieve progress

Complexity 11

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

and achieving SDGs frommany aspects [17] Rural areas canachieve some of the SDGs such as reducing urban-ruralinequality and protecting ecosystems by promoting balanceddevelopment of rural multifunction

With the development of the social economy rural areashave experienced a development process from ldquosinglerdquo toldquomultiplerdquo functions [49] However since priority has beengiven to urban-based economic development rural devel-opment has been deprioritized [57 58] resulting in a dualeconomic structure between urban and rural areas Con-sistent with the dual economic structure of urban and ruralareas Chinarsquos social security system also exhibits a veryobvious ldquodualisticrdquo feature Although the government hasissued a series of policies to strengthen the construction ofthe rural social security system there are still huge differ-ences between urban and rural social security in terms ofsecurity projects security levels and coverage 3e in-equality between urban and rural areas is significant 3eequalization of social security in urban and rural areas can bepromoted by realizing the balanced development of ruralmultifunction Besides the inequality between villages canalso be weakened

3e good ecological environment of the village is one ofthe important characteristics that distinguish the villagefrom the city With the deterioration of the urban ecologicalenvironment the importance of rural ecological environ-mental function has become more highlighted [44] Rapidurbanization and industrial development have a great im-pact on the rural ecological environment which is notconducive to the construction of ecological civilization Dueto the interaction of various rural functions the develop-ment of other functions especially the development ofnonagricultural production function will have more or lessimpact on the ecological environment 3e concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction pays moreattention to the ecological environment function so that thedevelopment of agricultural production nonagriculturalproduction and living and residential functions does notbreak through the restrictions of the ecological environmentwhich is conducive to protecting the ecosystem

63 Research Shortage and Prospects Compared with theprevious research this study gave a general definition ofrural multifunction and divided the multifunction types Wefurther improved the index system of rural multifunction onvillages and identified the dominant functions and inferiorfunctions to accurately characterize spatial differentiation ofrural multifunction 3en we proposed the concept ofbalanced development of rural multifunction and explainedwhy we should take balanced development as the goalorientation On the basis of different combinations ofmultifunction we put forward 5 development paths to re-alize balanced development 3e governments can imple-ment specific guidance for the development of each villagebased on the results Village planning based on the evalu-ation of rural functions can also better adapt to the demandsof sustainable rural development

Culture has always been an indispensable part ofmaintaining social order [59] With the change in ruralsociety rural material culture has been destroyed and in-tangible aspects of culture have also gradually declined [36]In recent years the proposal of rural revitalization strategieshas caused the public to pay more attention to the explo-ration and protection of rural culture [10 39] However thisstudy fails to discuss the rural culture function because theculture function which is complex and abstract are not yetprominent enough to conduct accurate quantitative analysisin ordinary villages at present 3ereupon although somescholars have started to broach rural cultural function [60]there is no unified and complete understanding of ruralcultural function in academia And culture is multidimen-sional [59] but most scholars tend to measure rural culturalfunction from the perspective of rural tourism which is anexcessively narrow interpretation of rural culture and is notbeneficial to rural cultural construction [1] In the futureresearch on the concepts and characteristics of the ruralcultural function should be further reinforced to compel theconstruction of a more scientific and reasonable indexsystem 3ese efforts could enable people to grasp the de-velopment trend of rural culture and to break the plight ofrural culture remodelling in the new era

In addition the study of rural multifunction in ruralareas as a whole began only recently so massive explorationand studies are needed Simultaneously due to the difficultyto obtain microscale temporal data there are still insufficientstudies on the evolution process stages and deep-leveldriving factors of multifunction on villages 3e formationmechanism of rural territorial multifunction that is tailoredto local characteristics at the microscale requires furtherstudy

7 Conclusions

At the village level multifunctional spatial differentiation inrural areas was more accurately characterized by con-structing the spatial quantitative evaluation index systemBased on the evaluation results the study extracted targetedrural development paths to realize the balanced develop-ment of rural multifunction 3e main conclusions of thisstudy can be summarized as follows

(1) 3e multifunctionality of rural areas in Jingjiang citywas noticeable 3e development gap between dif-ferent functions in the same village was large and thesame function showed an obvious spatial differenceConcretely the villages with strong agricultureproduction function were principally concentratedin the northwest which has abundant cultivated landresources and flat terrain 3e land use conversionand the transfer of surplus rural labor into thenonagricultural sector caused by urbanization arethe main factors affecting agriculture productionfunction 3e villages with strong nonagriculturalproduction function were mainly distributed in theindustrial park and the surrounding areas of the cityand towns indicating that this function is

12 Complexity

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

significantly affected by urbanization and industrialdevelopment Similarly the villages with a high levelof living function were mostly around towns 3ereis still much room for improvement in social securityfunction in general Contrary to the agriculturalproduction function nonagricultural productionfunction had negative effects on ecological envi-ronment function And different villages differed infunctional combinations

(2) A balanced development rather than an equal de-velopment of rural functions should be pursued toachieve multifunctionality Based on the recognitionof functional combinations 5 types of rural devel-opment were extracted 3e ldquointegrated develop-mentrdquo type should pay more attention to thecomprehensive and steady improvement of multiplefunctions to achieve balanced development 3eldquodominant function breakthroughrdquo type shouldfurther intensify the dominant functions and realizethe innovative development of each dominantfunction while the ldquoInferior function developmentwith dominant functionrdquo type should insist problem-oriented and drive the development of the weakfunctions with the dominant function to comple-ment the shortcomings 3e ldquoinferior function en-hancementrdquo type should focus on the inferiorfunctions according to the ldquoCannikin Lawrdquo And theldquotransfer developmentrdquo type could develop anotherfunction supported by local advantages to achieveprogress

Data Availability

3e data used was obtained from ldquoJingjiang StatisticalYearbookrdquo (2018)

Conflicts of Interest

3e authors declare that there are no conflicts of interestregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

3is work was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant no 41871178) Natural Re-sources Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province(KJXM2019004 and 2020018) and Graduate Research andInnovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (noKYCX20_1266)

References

[1] J ZhangM Shen and C Zhao ldquoRural renaissance rural Chinatransformation under productivism and postndashproductivismrdquoUrban Planning International vol 29 no 5 pp 1ndash7 2014

[2] W Han X Zhang and X Zheng ldquoLand use regulation andurban land value evidence from Chinardquo Land Use Policyvol 92 2020

[3] H Peng Human Behavior and Social Environment HigherEducation Press Beijing China 2016

[4] M Tan and X Li ldquo3e changing settlements in rural areasunder urban pressure in China patterns driving forces andpolicy implicationsrdquo Landscape and Urban Planning vol 120pp 170ndash177 2013

[5] Z Wang D Li H Cheng and T Luo ldquoMultifaceted influ-ences of urbanization on sense of place in the ruralndashurbanfringes of China growing dissolving and transitioningrdquoJournal of Urban Planning and Development vol 146 no 12014

[6] M Chen C Ye D Lu Y Sui and S Guo ldquoCognition andconstruction of the theoretical connotations of new urbani-zation with Chinese characteristicsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSciences vol 29 no 10 pp 1681ndash1698 2019

[7] Y Liu F Fang and Y Li ldquoKey issues of land use in China andimplications for policy makingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 40pp 6ndash12 2014

[8] China Bureau of Statistics China Statistical Yearbook 2019China Statistics Press Beijing China 2019 httpwwwstatsgovcntjsjndsj2019indexchhtm

[9] H Long and S Tu ldquo3eoretical thinking of rural restruc-turingrdquo Progress in Geography vol 37 no 5 pp 581ndash5902018

[10] Y Liu and Y Li ldquoRevitalize the worldrsquos countrysiderdquo Naturevol 548 no 7667 pp 275ndash277 2017

[11] J Holmes ldquoDiversity and change in Australiarsquos rangelands apost-productivist transition with a differencerdquo Transactionsof the Institute of British Geographers vol 27 no 3pp 362ndash384 2002

[12] J McCarthy ldquoRural geography multifunctional rural geog-raphies - reactionary or radicalrdquo Progress in Human Geog-raphy vol 29 no 6 pp 773ndash782 2005

[13] X Gu B Xie Z Zhang and H Guo ldquoRural multifunction inShanghai suburbs evaluation and spatial characteristics basedon villagesrdquo Habitat International vol 92 Article ID 1020412019

[14] G M Hollander ldquoAgricultural trade liberalization multi-functionality and sugar in the south Florida landscaperdquoGeoforum vol 35 no 3 pp 299ndash312 2004

[15] B Losch ldquoDebating the multifunctionality of agriculturefrom trade negotiations to development policies by theSouthrdquo Journal of Agrarian Change vol 4 no 3 pp 336ndash3602004

[16] I Ramniceanu and R Ackrill ldquoEU rural development policyin the new member states promoting multifunctionalityrdquoJournal of Rural Studies vol 23 no 4 pp 416ndash429 2006

[17] J Konecny and O Konecny ldquoMultifunctional agriculture asan integral part of rural development spatial concentrationand distribution in Czechiardquo Norsk Geografisk Tids-skriftmdashNorwegian Journal of Geography vol 72 no 5pp 257ndash272 2018

[18] L Ma H Long S Tu and Y Zhang ldquoCharacteristics ofchange and vitalization pathways of poor villages based onmultifunctional rural development theory a case study ofZahan Village in Hainan Provincerdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1435ndash1446 2019

[19] G A Wilson ldquo3e spatiality of multifunctional agriculture ahuman geography perspectiverdquo Geoforum vol 40 no 2pp 269ndash280 2009

[20] C Fu ldquo3e Evaluation of rural territorial functions a casestudy of Henan Chinardquo Journal of Resources and Ecologyvol 8 no 3 pp 242ndash250 2017

[21] G Jiang X He Y Qu R Zhang and Y Meng ldquoFunctionalevolution of rural housing land a comparative analysis across

Complexity 13

four typical areas representing different stages of industrial-ization in Chinardquo Land Use Policy vol 57 pp 645ndash654 2016

[22] J Holmes ldquoImpulses towards a multifunctional transition inrural Australia interpreting regional dynamics in landscapeslifestyles and livelihoodsrdquo Landscape Research vol 33 no 2pp 211ndash223 2008

[23] H Renting W A H Rossing J C J Groot et al ldquoExploringmultifunctional agriculture A review of conceptual ap-proaches and prospects for an integrative transitionalframeworkrdquo Journal of Environmental Management vol 90pp S112ndashS123 2009

[24] OECDMultifunctionality Towards an Analytical FrameworkOECD Publications Paris France 2001

[25] I Zasada ldquoMultifunctional peri-urban agriculture-A reviewof societal demands and the provision of goods and services byfarmingrdquo Land Use Policy vol 28 no 4 pp 639ndash648 2011

[26] L Mulazzani L Camanzi and G Malorgio ldquoMulti-functionality in fisheries and the provision of public goodsrdquoOcean amp Coastal Management vol 168 pp 51ndash62 2019

[27] X Chen J Fan W Sun A Tao and Y Liang ldquoA literaturereview of research on territorial function identifyingrdquo Ge-ography and GeondashInformation Science vol 29 no 2pp 72ndash79 2013

[28] J Zhang C Liu and F Chang ldquoA new approach for mul-tifunctional zoning of territorial space the panxi area of theupper Yangtze River in China case studyrdquo Sustainabilityvol 11 no 8 2019

[29] G A Wilson Multifunctional Agriculture A TransitionBeory Perspective Cromwell Press Trowbridge UK 2007

[30] C Barbieri and C Valdivia ldquoRecreation and agroforestryexamining new dimensions of multifunctionality in familyfarmsrdquo Journal of Rural Studies vol 26 no 4 pp 465ndash4732010

[31] J Holmes ldquoImpulses towards a multifunctional transition inrural Australia gaps in the research agendardquo Journal of RuralStudies vol 22 no 2 pp 142ndash160 2006

[32] R-Q Lin and Y-L Cai ldquoStudy on rural multifunction andlandscape reformulation in the transitional periodrdquo HumanGeography vol 27 no 2 pp 45ndash49 2012

[33] H Hong D Xie L Guo R Hu and L Heping ldquoDifferen-tiation of spatial function in a mountainous rural area from amultindashfunctional perspectiverdquo Acta Ecologica Sinica vol 37no 7 pp 2415ndash2427 2017

[34] Y Liu Y S Liu and L-Y Guo ldquoConnotations of rural re-gional multifunction and its policy implications in ChinardquoHuman Geography vol 26 no 6 pp 103ndash106 + 132 2011

[35] D O Pribadi I Zasada K Muller and S Pauleit ldquoMulti-functional adaption of farmers as response to urban growth inthe Jabodetabek Metropolitan Area Indonesiardquo Journal ofRural Studies vol 55 pp 100ndash111 2017

[36] X Ma X Li R Hu and M Ha Khuong ldquoDelineation ofldquoproduction-living-ecologicalrdquo space for urban fringe basedon rural multifunction evaluationrdquo Progress in Geographyvol 38 no 9 pp 1382ndash1392 2019

[37] R Yang X Luo and Y Chen ldquoSpatial pattern and influencingfactors of rural multifunctionality at county level in ChinardquoProgress in Geography vol 38 no 9 pp 1316ndash1328 2019

[38] Q Zhao G Jiang W Ma D Zhao Q Yanbo and Y YutingldquoSocial security or profitability Understanding multifunctionof rural housing land from farmersrsquo needs spatial differen-tiation and formation mechanismndashbased on a survey of 613typical farmers in Pinggu districtrdquo Land Use Policy vol 86pp 91ndash103 2019

[39] Q Wen L Shi C Ma and Y Wang ldquoSpatial heterogeneity ofmultidimensional poverty at the village level loess PlateaurdquoActa Geographica Sinica vol 73 no 10 pp 1850ndash1864 2018

[40] L Tang Y Liu Y Pan and Y Ren ldquoEvaluation and zoning ofrural regional multifunction based on BP model and Wardmethod a case in the Pinggu district of Beijing cityrdquo ScientiaGeographica Sinica vol 36 no 10 pp 1514ndash1521 2016

[41] K Xu and Y Fang ldquoSpatial differentiation and type identi-fication of rural territorial multindashfunctions in LiaoningProvincerdquo Geographical Research vol 38 no 3 pp 482ndash4952019

[42] J Holmes and N Argent ldquoRural transitions in the NambuccaValley socio-demographic change in a disadvantaged rurallocalerdquo Journal of Rural Studies vol 48 pp 129ndash142 2016

[43] S Liu and Y Wang ldquoFrom native rural China to urban-ruralChina the rural transition perspective of China transfor-mationrdquo Management World vol 34 no 10pp 128ndash146 + 232 2018

[44] T Wen ldquoEcological civilization transformation and the socialenterprises inheritance of Chinardquo Jouranl of Chinese Agri-culture University of Social Sciences vol 36 no 3 pp 111ndash1172019

[45] B Dedieu and S ZasserndashBedoya ldquoVertical integrationfarming systems in food chainrdquo in Proceedings of the 8thEuropean IFSA Symposium Empowerment of the RuralActors a Renewal of Farming Systems Perspectives pp 6ndash10Clermont-Ferrand France July 2008

[46] S Tu H Long and T Li ldquo3e mechanism and models ofvillages and towns construction and rural development inChinardquo Economic Geography vol 35 no 12 pp 141ndash1472015

[47] R Yang Y Liu and Y Liu ldquoRegional difference and patternsof Chinarsquos rural development in the new erardquo Progress inGeography vol 30 no 10 pp 1247ndash1254 2011

[48] L Willemen L Hein M E F Van Mensvoort andP H Verburg ldquoSpace for people plants and livestockQuantifying interactions among multiple landscape functionsin a Dutch rural regionrdquo Ecological Indicators vol 10 no 1pp 62ndash73 2010

[49] I Etxano I BarinagandashRementeria and O Garcia ldquoCon-flicting values in rural planning a multifunctionality ap-proach through social multi-criteria evaluationrdquoSustainability vol 10 2018

[50] Y Li H Long and Y Liu ldquoSpatio-temporal pattern of Chinarsquosrural development a rurality index perspectiverdquo Journal ofRural Studies vol 38 pp 12ndash26 2015

[51] H Long Y Liu and J Zou ldquoAssessment of rural developmenttypes and their rurality in eastern coastal Chinardquo ActaGeographica Sinica vol 64 no 4 pp 426ndash434 2009

[52] B Zhao U Kreuter and B Li ldquoAn ecosystem service valueassessment of landndashuse change on Chongming Island ChinardquoLand Use Policy vol 21 no 2 pp 139ndash148 2003

[53] L Zhang and N Yuan ldquoComparison and selection of indexstandardization method in linear comprehensive evaluationmodelrdquo Statistics amp Information Tribune vol 25 no 8pp 10ndash15 2010

[54] P Li C Chen and J Chen ldquoTemporal evolution and spatialdifferentiation of rural territorial multifunctions and theinfluencing factors the case of Jiangsu Provincerdquo ScientiaGeographica Sinica vol 35 no 7 pp 845ndash851 2015

[55] UN Transforming Our World Be 2030 Agenda for Sus-tainable Development (ARES701) United Nations NewYork NY USA 2015

14 Complexity

[56] D Adshead S 3acker L I Fuldauer and J W HallldquoDelivering on the Sustainable Development Goals throughlongndashterm infrastructure planningrdquo Global Environ Changvol 59 2019

[57] S He Y Liu C Webster and F Wu ldquoProperty rights re-distribution entitlement failure and the impoverishment oflandless farmers in Chinardquo Urban Studies vol 46 no 9pp 1925ndash1949 2009

[58] E Meijers and D van der Wouw ldquoStruggles and strategies ofrural regions in the age of the lsquourban triumphrsquordquo Journal ofRural Studies vol 66 pp 21ndash29 2019

[59] V Montalto C J Tacao Moura S Langedijk and M SaisanaldquoCulture counts an empirical approach to measure the cul-tural and creative vitality of European citiesrdquo Cities vol 89pp 167ndash185 2019

[60] S Tu H Long Y Zhang D Ge and Y Qu ldquoRuralrestructuring at village level under rapid urbanization inmetropolitan suburbs of China and its implications for in-novations in land use policyrdquo Habitat International vol 77pp 143ndash152 2018

Complexity 15

[56] D Adshead S 3acker L I Fuldauer and J W HallldquoDelivering on the Sustainable Development Goals throughlongndashterm infrastructure planningrdquo Global Environ Changvol 59 2019

[57] S He Y Liu C Webster and F Wu ldquoProperty rights re-distribution entitlement failure and the impoverishment oflandless farmers in Chinardquo Urban Studies vol 46 no 9pp 1925ndash1949 2009

[58] E Meijers and D van der Wouw ldquoStruggles and strategies ofrural regions in the age of the lsquourban triumphrsquordquo Journal ofRural Studies vol 66 pp 21ndash29 2019

[59] V Montalto C J Tacao Moura S Langedijk and M SaisanaldquoCulture counts an empirical approach to measure the cul-tural and creative vitality of European citiesrdquo Cities vol 89pp 167ndash185 2019

[60] S Tu H Long Y Zhang D Ge and Y Qu ldquoRuralrestructuring at village level under rapid urbanization inmetropolitan suburbs of China and its implications for in-novations in land use policyrdquo Habitat International vol 77pp 143ndash152 2018

Complexity 15