How the “Village Merger and Resettlement” Policy Reshapes Agricultural Carbon Emissions: An Analysis of Effects and Mechanisms from Chinese Rural Practices

The “Village Merger and Resettlement” policy, as an adjustment of rural living arrangements and spatial organization, addresses the rural population outflow against the backdrop of global urbanization and industrialization. It has profound impacts on agricultural resource allocation, technological innovation, and carbon emissions, playing a significant role in achieving green and low-carbon development alongside high-quality agricultural advancement. This paper conducts an empirical analysis based on panel data from 30 provincial regions in China from 2001 to 2022 (excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) to examine the impact of the “Village Merger and Resettlement” policy on agricultural carbon emissions. It explores the mediating effects of agricultural informatization and the integration of agricultural industries and analyzes the moderating roles of government environmental regulations and public environmental participation. The findings indicate that the “Village Merger and Resettlement” policy significantly suppresses agricultural carbon emissions, with the effects being more pronounced in major grain-producing areas, regions with flat terrain, convenient transportation, and higher levels of technology and labor, as well as on the east side of the Hu Huanyong Line, where the degree of agricultural industrial restructuring is lower and government policy enforcement is stronger. The mediation analysis reveals that the processes of agricultural informatization and industry integration both play positive transmission roles in the policy’s impact on reducing agricultural carbon emissions. The moderation analysis shows that compulsory government environmental regulations have a negative moderating effect on the policy’s carbon emission suppression, while public environmental participation has a positive moderating effect. Therefore, in implementing the “Village Merger and Resettlement” policy, it is necessary to tailor strategies to local conditions, make full use of agricultural informatization resources, reasonably plan the integration of agricultural industries, and accurately grasp the roles of environmental regulations to promote the positive effects on green, low-carbon, and high-quality agricultural development.