“…At the stage of top‐down optimization of rural relocations, local governments and planners formulated relocation solutions based on their own demands and local situations (Palmer, ). Systems analysis of inhabitant status, economic incentives, sociocultural features, agricultural production conditions, and spatial accessibility of rural settlements was usually adopted to find suitable relocation alternatives (van Lier, ; Kim, Woosnam, Marcouiller, Aleshinloye & Choi, ; Cao, Bai, Sun, & Zhou, ; Sun, Xu, Liu, Liu, & Wang, ). Since these alternatives mainly highlighted concentrated rural settlements, technical feasibility, and economic justifiability from a manager/planner standpoint (Li, Liu, Long, & Cui, ; Liu, Yang, Liu, Wei, & Yang, ), they were sometimes inconsistent with the will of farmers and thus difficult to carry out in practice (Dikmen, ).…”