How Can Rural Governance Precisely Respond to Sustainable Rural Revitalization from a Multi-Scale Perspective?—Empirical Evidence from Nanning, China

Rural governance is a key means of promoting sustainable rural development and is gradually evolving toward interdisciplinary research across multiple scales. How should governments at all levels implement precise policy to achieve rural revitalization goals? To reveal the multi-scale characteristics of rural spatial governance, this study proposes theoretical hypotheses and constructs a three-level analytical framework encompassing the municipal, functional area, and township dimensions. Taking Nanning City as a case study, it comprehensively employs global and local spatial autocorrelation methods to quantitatively analyze the spatial differentiation patterns and governance effectiveness across the five dimensions of rural revitalization at different scales. The results indicate that indicators such as ecological livability, industrial prosperity, life affluence, rural civilization, and effective governance all exhibit significant clustering patterns at various scales, with notable differences in the intensity of clustering across these scales. Specifically, the ecological livability indicator exhibits the strongest spatial agglomeration at the municipal level (Moran’s I = 0.578), industrial prosperity and affluent living show the strongest correlations at the functional area level (with average Moran’s I values of 0.281 and 0.414, respectively), while rural civilization and effective governance display the most pronounced clustering at the township level (Moran’s I values of 0.363 and 0.350). The findings provide direct evidence for implementing differentiated and precise rural spatial governance in Nanning City and similar regions, while also contributing to the optimization of cross-level policy resource allocation. Future research should further integrate multidisciplinary perspectives and expand the analysis of multi-stakeholder participation mechanisms.