Assessing Livelihood Space and Its Driving Mechanisms for Poverty Alleviation in Relocating Households: Evidence from the Karst Regions of Southwest China

Livelihood space serves as a fundamental medium for the livelihood practices of rural households. Understanding its optimization and reconstruction is essential for promoting the sustainable development of resettled households. This study adopts a spatial perspective to develop a multidimensional measurement framework for livelihood space. Focusing on resettled households in the karst regions of Guizhou, China, we integrate the Optimal Parameter-based Geographical Detector (OPGD) with fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to systematically analyze the driving mechanisms and equifinal configuration pathways involved in the reconstruction of livelihood space. The key results are as follows: (1) The overall livelihood space is characterized as moderate. Among the various dimensions, institutional and cultural spaces receive the highest scores, followed by social and production spaces, while residential space is rated the lowest. (2) Excluding residential space, there are significant dimensional disparities across different resettlement and livelihood typologies. Households resettled in county towns outperform those in non-county areas. In terms of livelihood types, integrated and off-farm households rank the highest, whereas farming-dependent and subsidy-dependent households rank the lowest. (3) The OPGD analysis indicates that household income and accessibility to public services are primary drivers, exhibiting a bivariate nonlinear synergistic enhancement. (4) The fsQCA findings confirm that the reconstruction of livelihood space is not driven by a single factor; rather, it is influenced by four equifinal pathways formed through nonlinear interactions of multiple conditions, collectively contributing to the enhancement of high-livelihood space. The integration of OPGD and fsQCA moves beyond conventional linear approaches, yielding fresh empirical evidence and new perspectives on livelihood space reconstruction and the sustainability of fragile regions.