Portability of Rural Migrants’ Three Rights in County-Level Urbanization — Evidence From Developed Regions in Mainland China

Establishing a portability model for the three rights—the rights to contracted land management, homestead land use, and collective income distribution—is vital for people-centered urbanization in developing countries. Drawing on a comprehensive review of relevant literature and original survey data from two representative counties in the Yangtze River Delta—a developed region in mainland China, we construct a Structural Equation Model (SEM) with four latent constructs—portability of the three rights, institutional factors, market factors, and technological factors—to examine their effects on portability of the three rights during county-level urbanization. The SEM results reveal significant positive associations between institutional, market, and technological factors and the portability of the three rights, with technology exerting the strongest influence. To overcome the fragmentation of rural migrants’ rights across urban and rural areas, we propose a trinity governance framework integrating institutional safeguards, market mechanisms, and technological application to secure migrants’ legitimate rights and advance county-level urbanization smoothly.