Pathways for Enhancing Rural Community Elderly Care Capacity in Sichuan Province from an Empowerment Theory Perspective: An Empirical Study Based on fsQCA

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-996-4_17How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Empowerment Theory; fsQCA; Rural Community Elderly Care; Capacity Enhancement; Configuration Pathways; Social Security

Abstract

With the intensification of population aging, rural community-based elderly care has become a critical issue for rural revitalization and the development of social security systems. Based on empowerment theory, this study selected 21 prefecture-level cities in Sichuan Province (including ethnic regions) as research samples. Employing the fsQCA method, a conditional variable system was constructed across three dimensions: policy environment, community support, and individual capacity. Using the synthesized “Rural Community Elderly Care Capacity Index (RCECCI)” as the outcome variable, the study explored the configurational pathways for enhancing rural community elderly care capacity. Findings reveal that there is no single necessary condition for enhancing rural community elderly care capacity; instead, it is achieved through three equivalent configurational pathways. Digital infrastructure coverage and per capita disposable income of rural residents are the common core supporting conditions for all pathways, with different pathways suited to rural areas possessing distinct resource endowments. These findings enrich the application scenarios of empowerment theory in the field of rural elderly care and provide empirical evidence for formulating differentiated strategies to enhance rural community elderly care capacity.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Wenjie Chen
AU  - Jing Chen
AU  - Pei Yao
AU  - Junyong Wang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/15
TI  - Pathways for Enhancing Rural Community Elderly Care Capacity in Sichuan Province from an Empowerment Theory Perspective: An Empirical Study Based on fsQCA
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 7th Management Science Informatization and Economic Innovation Development Conference (MSIEID 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 194
EP  - 207
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-996-4_17
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-996-4_17
ID  - Chen2026
ER  -