Assessment and driving mechanism of rural hollowing under the rural revitalization strategy: A case study of Sichuan Province

With the rapid development of urbanization and modernization, the population of traditional villages has migrated to the surrounding areas, resulting in the phenomenon of rural hollowing. Identifying the spatial pattern of rural hollowing differentiation and its driving mechanism is an important topic that needs to be urgently addressed in the current rural revitalization strategy. In this context, this study took the 183 counties and urban areas in Sichuan Province as the study area, constructed the rural hollowing assessment framework and index system from the three subsystems of population and economy, land and infrastructure, and used the triangular fuzzy number-based hierarchical analysis method and multiple regression analysis to reveal the spatial distribution pattern of rural hollowing and its formation mechanism in Sichuan Province. The results show that: ① The degree of population and economic hollowing gradually decreases from the central city to the surrounding area, showing a distribution pattern of high in the east and low in the west, while the land hollowing and infrastructure hollowing show a distribution pattern of low in the east and high in the west; ② The comprehensive hollowing shows a balanced development, with the high value area mainly concentrated in the Chengdu Plain and its periphery, and the distribution tendency is slowing down from the central city to the surrounding area; ③ The rural hollowing of Sichuan Province is a result of a variety of factors, with the local financial revenue and the gross output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery being the most positively and negatively correlated influencing factors, respectively.