RESEARCH ARTICLE Town Mouse or Country Mouse: Identifying a Town Dislocation Effect in Chinese

Understanding urbanization and evaluating its impact are vital for formulating global sus-tainable development. The results obtained from evaluating the impact of urbanization, however, depend on the kind of measurement used. With the goal of increasing our under-standing of the impact of urbanization, we developed direct and indirect subjective indica-tors to measure how people assess their living situation. The survey revealed that the projected endorsements and perceived social ambiance of people toward living in different types of settlements did not improve along with the urbanization level in China. The assess-ment scores from the city dwellers were not significantly different from those from the coun-try areas and, more surprisingly, both were significantly higher than the assessment scores of the town dwellers, which we had expected to fall between the assessment scores of the country and city dwellers. Instead their scores were the lowest. We dubbed this V-shaped relationship the “town dislocation effect.”When searching for a potential explanation for this effect, we found additional town dislocation effects in social support, loss aversion, and re-ceptivity toward genetically modified food. Further analysis showed that only social support mediated the relationship between the three tiers of settlements (cities, country areas, and towns) and the subjective indicator. The projected endorsements yielded significant subjec-tive assessments that could enhance our understanding of Chinese urbanization. Towns posed specific problems that require special attention