Pathways and mechanisms of operational governance empowering livable, workable, harmonious and beautiful countryside: A multiple-case study based on Lin'an, Zhejiang

Rural tourism represents a critical pathway for developing livable, workable, harmonious and beautiful countryside. However, it currently faces new structural dilemmas in practice, reflecting deep-seated contradictions such as lagging governance mechanisms, imbalanced human-land relationships, and weakened development momentum. To address these issues, this paper integrates theories of operational governance and human-land-industry synergy to construct a three-dimensional analytical framework of "governance-construction-operation". Through analyzing three typical cases of rural operation models in Lin'an district, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, we identify implementation pathways and intrinsic mechanisms for developing livable, workable, harmonious and beautiful countryside in rural tourism destinations. The research indicates that: (1) The development of livable, workable, harmonious and beautiful countryside follows a tripartite synergistic logic of "governance-construction-operation", where governance serves as the prerequisite and safeguard, construction as the carrier and cornerstone, and operation as the kinetic force and engine. (2) Operational governance centered on "human" as the core driver, "land" as the spatial carrier, and "industry" as the economic linkage. By harmonizing relationships among the government, market, village communities, society, it revitalizes idle resources and optimizes the layout of "production-living-ecological" spaces. This approach promotes industrial integration and common prosperity while synergistically advancing the development of livable, workable, harmonious and beautiful countryside in rural tourism destinations. (3) Operational governance activates human-land-industry synergies, driving systematic restructuring of rural "social-material-economic" spaces. This facilitates element upgrading through value feedback that embodies "harmonious and beautiful-livable-workable" qualities, ultimately forming a closed-loop evolutionary mechanism of "element activation-spatial restructuring-value feedback". This study provides replicable pathways and theoretical insights for developing rural tourism destinations aligned with the goal of developing livable, workable, harmonious and beautiful countryside.