Municipal-Level Analysis of Peer Effects in China’s Sustainable Rural Development: Mechanisms and Imitation Patterns

Based on panel data from 274 prefecture-level cities in China (2011–2022), this study employs a peer effects model to examine three questions: whether peer effects exist in sustainable rural development, what mechanisms underlie them, and which regions are imitated. It thereby offers a new perspective on the endogenous drivers of rural development. The main findings are as follows. Baseline regression results confirm a significant positive peer effect on rural sustainable development. This result remains robust after a series of tests addressing endogeneity and robustness, including the replacement of explanatory variables, data indentation, exclusion of provincial capitals, placebo tests, and instrumental variable estimation. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that central and western regions are more inclined to learn from other cities in the process of sustainable rural development, whereas the eastern region leans more toward innovation. After the Rural Revitalization Strategy was introduced in 2017, regions have actively explored new rural development models, leading to a decline in the peer effects coefficient compared to the pre-2017 period. Mechanism analysis indicates that both learning-based imitation and competitive imitation serve as channels for peer effects in rural sustainable development. A region’s own development experience does not suppress peer effects. Economically more developed regions are more likely to become imitation targets. Moreover, performance pressure on local officials and the degree of competition among prefecture-level cities strengthen the peer effects. After reclassifying peer groups based on economic structure and geographical location, results show that in the process of rural sustainable development, local governments primarily learn from other regions within the same province that share similar economic structures and are geographically proximate. Based on these findings, this paper proposes differentiated policy recommendations to support sustainable rural development.