Political participation enhances subjective well-being in rural China: the dual mediating pathways of fairness and trust

BackgroundSubjective well-being is a core indicator of livelihood quality and grassroots governance effectiveness. Against the backdrop of China’s Rural Revitalization Strategy, improving rural residents’ well-being is a central goal of national governance. However, existing scholarship has long focused on material determinants such as income and education, while lacking systematic analysis of the well-being transmission mechanisms of non-economic institutional factors like political participation. In particular, how grassroots political participation affects rural residents’ happiness through socio-cognitive pathways, and the heterogeneous boundary effects of subjective social status (SSS), remain critical research gaps in rural well-being studies.MethodsDrawing on Equity Theory and Social Cognitive Theory, this study constructs a moderated parallel mediation framework based on nationally representative data from the 2023 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS). We employ OLS regression with robust standard errors, instrumental variable estimation, and bias-corrected Bootstrap testing to systematically examine the mechanisms and boundary conditions of village committee election participation on rural residents’ subjective well-being.ResultsFirst, political participation exhibits a stable positive association with rural residents’ subjective well-being, which remains consistent across multiple robustness checks. However, instrumental variable estimation does not support definitive causal inference, so we prudently frame our core finding as a robust correlational association. Second, the association is transmitted through two parallel pathways: social fairness perception acts as the dominant mediating mechanism, while general social trust plays a secondary complementary role. Third, SSS exerts an asymmetric moderating effect: it only significantly strengthens the well-being returns of fairness perception among individuals with lower SSS, while no significant moderating effect is observed for the social trust pathway. Fourth, heterogeneity analysis shows that the well-being association is only significant among middle-aged (45, 60 years) and high-income rural residents.ConclusionThis study delineates the dual psychological mechanisms and asymmetric stratification boundary of political participation’s well-being effects in rural China. It not only fills the academic gap of existing well-being research’s long-standing focus on material factors and neglect of non-economic psychological mechanisms, but also verifies the central role of institutional fairness perceptions in the well-being effects of grassroots governance. Our findings provide empirical evidence for advancing inclusive rural governance and precisely improving the sense of gain among different groups.