Improving residents’ satisfaction with administrative boundary changes: A comparative analysis based on the township-town merger policy

Administrative boundary changes driven by policies are pivotal instruments for improving resource allocation efficiency. Studying the factors driving residents’ satisfaction with these policies is crucial for enhancing policy effectiveness. Based on field surveys in Lukou and Hengxi Subdistricts, this paper constructs a logit model to identify key determinants of residents’ satisfaction with the township-town merger policy (TMP) and applies the Fairlie decomposition to quantify the sources of satisfaction disparities between subdistricts. Results indicate that employment incentives, social security, and cultural development are the primary drivers of policy satisfaction and interregional differences, exerting greater influence than individual demographic traits. Mechanistically, the study reveals that the development approaches of different regions are strongly associated with policy satisfaction. Besides, residents in communities with stronger collective identity tend to evaluate policy outcomes through temporal comparisons with their own past, leading to higher satisfaction when improvements in social security and cultural preservation are evident. Conversely, in areas with weakened collective identity, residents form higher expectations through upward social comparisons with more developed neighboring subdistricts. When actual policy outcomes fall short of these expectations, satisfaction declines. These findings offer a micro-perspective on how top-down administrative boundary reforms affect public satisfaction, providing recommendations for policy design, sustainable governance, and regional planning.