Effects of Multifunctional Rural Land Use on Residents’ Wellbeing: Evidence from the Xinzhou District of Wuhan City, China

The purpose of this article is to analyze the effects of multifunctional rural land use (MRLU) on residents’ wellbeing. A questionnaire survey on 805 rural residents in 64 villages of the Xinzhou District of Wuhan city in China, and estimators of OLS, ordered logit, and ordered probit were employed. The Shannon’s H index and Simpson’s Reciprocal Index are used to measure MRLU and the life satisfaction approach is used to measure wellbeing. An inverted-U pattern is observed in the relationship between MRLU and wellbeing, and another finding of the study is the threshold of MRLU. The article contributes to the literature by integrating MRLU into wellbeing analysis from a spatial-separated form, and deepens the relationship between MRLU and the residents’ wellbeing. MRLU is characterized by differences and a moderation, which can provide a reference for profiling rural land use planning and for designing land-use policy, and for prompting rural sustainable development.