Does cognition matter? Applying the push‐pull‐mooring model to Chinese farmers' willingness to withdraw from rural homesteads

This study proposes the use of push-pull-mooring model to investigate the main factors behind farmers' willingness to withdraw from rural homesteads with unique survey datasets taken from a pilot area in China. Our empirical results, which were derived from partial least squares structural equation modelling, mostly support our theoretical hypotheses, suggesting that policy cognition is a meaningful moderating factor that reflects farmers' individual attitudes, environmental influences, and social norms and plays a significant role in farmers' decision-making processes. Our findings have strong policy implications for developing a “strategy of rural vitalization” and reforming the current rural homesteads system in China.