A Study on the Impact of the Village Accounting Agency Model on Village-Level Financial Management in the Context of Rural Revitalization

When the countryside thrives, the nation thrives; when the countryside declines, the nation declines. Rural revitalization hinges on rural governance, and village-level financial management is a crucial component of rural governance. The traditional model of “village accounts managed by townships” has weakened villagers' rights to self-governance and exacerbated conflicts between them and the government; a new financial management model is needed to improve the effectiveness of financial governance. This study selected 60 administrative villages from the eastern, central, and western regions as its sample. Based on a theoretical framework for the transition from a “delegated management” to a “co-governance” model in village-level financial management, it constructed an empirical model using financial transparency and villager participation as mediating variables to conduct an in-depth analysis of the underlying mechanisms through which this shift in models influences village-level financial management. The results indicate that: (1) The village-accounts-agency model has a significant positive impact on the effectiveness of village-level financial governance. (2) Financial transparency serves as an intermediary between the village accounting agency model and village-level financial governance. (3) Villager participation serves as a mediating factor between the village accounting agency model and village-level financial governance. The agency model for village accounts identified by this study provides a reference for local governments to optimize their financial management systems, thereby helping to enhance governance effectiveness under the rural revitalization strategy.