Regional Group Development Promotes Common Prosperity: Social Embedding Perspective and Competitiveness Formation — A Daxia Jiang, Zhejiang Province Example
Jianhua Cai, Ling Huang, Leyi Liang, Junwei Zheng, Fei Xiang, Weilong Chen, Jing Zhang, Xinwen Zhang
Keywords:
regional group development; social embeddedness; rural regional sustainable competitiveness; common prosperity; Mediating effect
Abstract:
China’s comprehensive regional group revitalization and common prosperity (CP) model has made strides in addressing the pitfalls of fragmented rural development. With this issue, single social networks are typically prioritized, and limited attention is paid to the underlying transmission mechanisms. Hence, we construct an integrated framework linking social embeddedness, rural regional sustainable competitiveness (SC), and CP to better understand the enablers of common social prosperity: deep cross-village synergy. Enablement entails three dimensions of social embeddedness: organization, rules, and structure. Although the framework does not directly produce CP, it transforms production, life, and ecological activities into sustainable rural competitiveness. Using the Daxia Jiang region in Zhejiang Province as a survey-based econometric study, we find that systematic improvements to competitiveness connects social embeddedness and CP. Furthermore, Rural regional sustainable competitiveness plays a dominant mediating role in the "social embeddedness → common prosperity" pathway, with the indirect effect accounting for 101.48% of the total effect. Subdimension tests show that production competitiveness is the most prominent mediator (82.93%), followed by life and ecological competitiveness. Additionally, the promoting effect of social embeddedness is stronger in economically weaker and remote villages, indicating the need for stronger inclusion. The system through which regional group development progresses from social relationship construction to system capability formation is shown, enabling the strategic achievement of CP. A new theoretical perspective for understanding the internal drivers of coordinated rural regional development is provided, highlighting the importance of cultivating systematic regional competitiveness.
Fulltext download:
 Regional Group Development Promotes Common Prosperity: Social Embedding Perspective and Competitiveness Formation — A Daxia Jiang, Zhejiang Province Example [PDF file] [Filesize: 725.38 KB]
 10.7441/joc.2026.02.11
Cai, J., Huang, L., Liang, L., Zheng, J., Xiang, F., Chen, W., Zhang, J., & Zhang, X. (2026). Regional Group Development Promotes Common Prosperity: Social Embedding Perspective and Competitiveness Formation — A Daxia Jiang, Zhejiang Province Example. Journal of Competitiveness 18(2), 277–306. https://doi.org/10.7441/joc.2026.02.11
|
