The Evolution and Characteristics of Traditional Village Protection Policies in China from the Perspective of Attention Allocation

The evolution of China’s traditional village protection policies reflects established processes of systemic change, from initial exploration and gradual construction to continuous optimization and deepening. Currently, within a critical period of economic transition from high-speed growth to high-quality development, China is seeking to define rules and internal logic regarding its policy evolution for the protection of traditional villages. This is important for promoting high-quality protection and sustainable development of traditional villages. Based on the theory of “attention allocation,” this study analyzed 107 laws, regulations, departmental rules, and other important policy documents formulated, promulgated, and implemented by the national legislative body (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) or the highest state administrative organs from 1950 to 2023. By applying the three-dimensional analytical framework of “situation–attention–behavior,” this study investigated the stage characteristics and internal mechanisms of the evolution of China’s traditional village protection policies, which are jointly driven by policy situation, government attention allocation and policy behavior. The results showed that: (1) policy evolution is driven by specific situations and attention allocation, while the external manifestations of policy evolution include alterations in policy subjects, effectiveness levels, and policy tools triggered by policy behavior choices; (2) China’s traditional village protection policies have gone through four stages: (i) the policy incipience stage (1950-2001), (ii) the initial institutionalization stage (2002-2011), (iii) the upscaling and integration stage (2012-2019), and (iv) the paradigm transformation stage (2020-present). In the policy incipience stage, policy as a concept was primarily materialistic, with government attention focused on protecting cultural relics within villages. During the initial institutionalization stage, this concept remained materialistic, but government attention shifted to mainly focus on the preservation of cultural relics, historic and cultural villages, and intangible cultural heritage. As policies entered the upscaling and integration stage, the concept shifted to humanism, with government attention prioritizing both the protection of cultural relics and the preservation and utilization of traditional villages. In the paradigm transformation stage, policy evolved further into ecologism, where government attention expanded to include the protection of cultural relics, the preservation and utilization of traditional villages, and the demonstration of concentrated and contiguous preservation and utilization of traditional villages. The intensity and scope of government attention allocation followed an inverted U-shaped trend that peaked during the upscaling and integration phases. Driven by policy concepts and government attention allocation, the scope of policy issues has continuously expanded, and the relationships among issues have shifted from simple to complex; (3) during the evolution of traditional village protection policies, the number of policy entities and the degree of their cooperation gradually increased, peaking during the upscaling and integration stages, before declining during the paradigm transformation stage. Concurrently, the level of policy effectiveness continuously decreased, while policy tools evolved from reliance on environmental-type tools toward a diversified mix that combined environmental, supply-side, and demand-side tools. These findings contribute to understanding the internal mechanisms of the formulation and evolution of traditional village protection policies, identify the characteristics and shortcomings of current policies, and provide valuable references for future policy formulation and improvement.