The spatial production of rural settlements as rural homestays in the context of rural revitalization: Evidence from a rural tourism experiment in a Chinese village

Under the Rural Revitalization Strategy, an increasing number of Chinese villages have begun to build rural homestays to promote rural industrial transformation and drive local economic recovery. The spatial effect of and mechanism and the social response to rural homestays, which have constituted a new mode of rural development, have not been dialectically interpreted. Based on production of space theory, the process of constructing a typical Chinese rural homestay is discussed, and the spatial and social changes caused by the development of rural homestays are revealed. Rights and capital jointly dominate this development process, causing rural settlements and rural society to make major adjustments. The construction of rural homestays has not only changed the spatial layout, structure and function of rural settlements but also decreased the living space of indigenous farmers, thus causing a transformation of farmers’ livelihood and changes in their daily lives. The kind of tourism-based consumption resulting from the development of rural homestays has fostered competitive social relations among famers and created multiple issues for rural society, such as class differentiation and contradictions. The development of rural homestays has been accompanied by spatial deprivation and exclusion as well as imbalanced development, which has been the main problem in the current development of rural China. These issues indicate that in the context of modern consumption, the relationship between urban and rural areas, once characterized by explicit deprivation, has embodied an implicit discipline. In the future, sustainability in the development of rural homestays and rural governance that conforms to spatial justice principles must be sought.