Measurement and Path Selection of Rural Development Level in Enclave Areas: A Case Study of Jingyuan County, Gansu Province

The development of rural areas is a significant component in social and economic activities. It is very important for optimizing the allocation of rural production and living factors, promoting the integration of urban and rural areas and sustainable development to identify the characteristics and main types of regional rural development. In this paper, 169 villages in Jingyuan County were selected as the research object, and the evaluation index system of rural development level was constructed from the perspective of “Factor-structure-function”. The rural development level and spatial structure characteristics of Jingyuan County were analyzed by using rural development index, regional function index, nearest neighbor index, and exploratory spatial data analysis, and the types and specific paths of rural development were determined. The results showed the following: Rural development of Jingyuan County is at a low level, which is characterized by “high in the south and low in the north”. The level of rural development shows significant spatial dependence in the global space, and the spatial agglomeration characteristics are obvious, which are manifested as strong agglomeration dominated by resource endowment and cultural function and weak agglomeration dominated by production function and location relationship. The local space is characterized by stable high value and high value (H-H), low value and low value (L-L) bidirectional agglomeration. According to the spatial characteristics of the rural development level, the “4 + 10 + 6 + 2” system of rural development type identification in Jingyuan County was constructed, and finally it was determined that policy leading and characteristic protection are the dominant types of rural development. Based on this, this paper put forward specific paths and development models of different types of rural development in Jingyuan County from seven dimensions: industry, population, land, tourism, space, culture and ecology, so as to provide ideas and references for the integration of urban and rural areas, the implementation of rural revitalization strategy, and sustainable development in the western poverty-stricken areas.