Rural housing-jobs synergy at the county level in mountainous and hilly areas of China: Spatio-temporal pattern and driving mechanism

Rural decline is a severe global problem. The sustainable development of rural areas is in jeopardy due to rapid migration out of rural areas and the separation of rural housing and jobs. Rural housing-jobs synergy (RHJS) is conducive to promoting high-quality and sustainable development of rural areas. Based on rural permanent population, rural employment population, and rural working-age population data from 2007 to 2020, this study applied spatial autocorrelation analysis and Geodetector model to explore the spatio-temporal pattern and driving factors of RHJS at the county scale in Chongqing. Results showed that RHJS in Chongqing demonstrated a steady upward trend and showed spatial heterogeneity. The spatial layout of RHJS was characterized by spatial agglomeration. RHJS hotspots are all located in the yuzhong district and has advantages in terms of its natural resource environment and market placement, while the coldspots are concentrated in the northeast of Chongqing with generally poor conditions. The internal drivers of county RHJS have gradually shifted from a mix of resource-environmental factors and economic factors to a combination of economic factors and social public service factors, with the influence of social public service factors increasing. Market location was the main external driving factor for RHJS, and the influence of technological innovation factors is growing. The degree of influence of the selected variables in each driver on RHIS varies spatially and temporally, and improving RHIS can be accomplished by optimizing the industrial structure, boosting investment in science and technology, and improving the quality of social public services such as healthcare. The proximity of provincial capital cities, the income ratio of urban and rural residents, and the altitude have a significant negative effect on the regional divergence, they are the main variables affecting the RHJS divergence. These findings will assist decision-makers in developing future rural sustainable development policies for the construction of livable and employable villages and optimize rural areas spatial structures by RHJS situation and its driving factors in various regions of counties in mountainous and hilly ecologically fragile areas, and also serve as a useful reference for sustainable a rural development research in other developing countries.