The spatial pattern and influencing factors of the quality of life of China’s rural residents base on the ESDA-GWR model analysis

Improving rural residents’ quality of life is the ultimate goal and the highest priority of social development. Based on the sectional data of provinces, municipality directly under the Central Government and autonomous regions, this paper analyzed the level of the quality of life of rural residents by the methods of the principal component analysis and the geographical weighted regression model and discussed the spatial pattern and influencing factors of the quality of life of rural residents in China. Results show that the overall quality of life score of rural residents was 0.348, which was not very high. From the provincial perspective, the comprehensive quality of life of farmers in Zhejiang was the highest (4.125), and the lowest was for Heilongjiang (-1.209), showing obvious provincial differences. In terms of the four major regions, the quality of life of farmers ranges from high to low in the following order: the eastern region (1.589), the western region (-0.067), the central region (-0.211), and the northeast region (-1.013). The local spatial pattern of the quality of life of farmers in China has three types: high-high(HH), low-high (LH), and low-low (LL) agglomerations. Among them, the HH type is distributed in Shanghai, the LL type is distributed in Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Liaoning and other regions, and the LH type is distributed in Jiangsu Province. This paper also finds that the per capita net income of farmers, the urbanization rate, education expenditure, and social security and employment expenditure have positive influences on the quality of life of rural residents in China with spatial heterogeneity. Therefore, this paper provides the following suggests: 1)to maintain the overall planning of regional social and economic coordination of the development concept; 2) to implement the rural revitalization strategyaccording to the local conditions; 3)to continue promoting a new type of people-centered urbanization and giving full play to the role of industrialization and urbanization in supporting agriculture; and 4)to prioritize the employment and a proactive employment policy to achieve higher quality and full employment.