Promoting Sustainable Rural Development: The Role of Industrial Integration in Strengthening Livelihood Resilience of Chinese Farmers

Rural industrial integration is widely recognized as a pivotal strategy for rural revitalization and sustainable development. However, despite its potential to foster economic growth, its actual impact on the livelihood resilience of individual farm households remains a complex issue that requires empirical validation. Drawing upon the Sustainable Livelihood Analysis (SLA) framework and micro-level data from the China Land Economic Survey (CLES) (2020–2022), this study employs propensity score matching (PSM) and the conditional mixed process (CMP) method to systematically examine the impact of rural industrial integration on household livelihood resilience, its transmission mechanisms, and its heterogeneous effects. The empirical results demonstrate that rural industrial integration significantly enhances farmers’ livelihood resilience, with an estimated net impact of 17.1%. Specifically, the positive influence on learning capacity is found to be more pronounced than that on buffering and self-organizing capacities. Mechanism analysis suggests that livelihood resilience is bolstered through the dual pathways of “external push” and “endogenous pull.” Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis reveals that models involving vertical industrial chain extension and technology diffusion models yield more substantial impacts among various integration forms. Notably, compared to leading enterprises, participation in cooperatives is found to exert a more significant influence on farmers’ resilience. Consequently, to promote sustainable livelihoods, policy interventions should prioritize the integrated development of rural industries by balancing external resource mobilization with the activation of internal drivers, while remaining vigilant against potential development imbalances arising from different organizational structures.