Table 1_Transient prosperity or durable resilience: how place-based specialty agricultural policy shapes rural household welfare in China.docx

Mediation analysis is further applied to test three transmission pathways: agricultural land intensification, employment structure transformation, and production technology upgrading. Parallel trend tests, placebo permutation, heterogeneous treatment effect diagnostics, threshold changing robustness checks, and instrumental‑variable estimation are implemented to establish causal validity.</p>Results<p>SAZ construction improves household income quality in the short run to generate transient prosperity, and enhances long-term development resilience to build durable resilience.

This is mainly attributed to three complementary transmission channels: agricultural land intensification, employment structure transformation, and production technology upgrading. Among them, employment structure transformation serves as the dominant pathway, particularly for long-term development resilience, while production technology upgrading and agricultural land intensification play reinforcing roles. Heterogeneity analysis shows that households in counties with stronger agricultural foundations obtain larger welfare gains, and this advantage is especially pronounced for durable resilience.

Across SAZ product categories, all five types significantly raise short-term income quality, but the gains in development resilience are insignificant for aquaculture zones. Across household types, transient prosperity gains are broadly comparable regardless of income structure, while durable resilience gains are concentrated among agriculture-dominated households.</p>Conclusion<p>Place-based specialty-agricultural policy can achieve not only immediate income‑driven prosperity but also durable livelihood resilience via land, labor, and technology factor reallocation.

To maximize policy returns, local governments should reform SAZ performance appraisal to incorporate resilience-related indicators, prioritize employment structure upgrading, and implement differentiated support for lagging counties, specific SAZ product categories, and heterogeneous household groups. The findings offer replicable practical references for developing economies pursuing balanced short-run welfare improvement and long-term resilient rural livelihoods.</p>