Abstract: Political participation is an important path to safeguard people’s democracy at the grassroots levels. Based on rational choice institutionalism theory and planned behavior theory, this paper uses structural equation model (SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the factors influencing political participation of rural residents. Through the empirical analysis of 418 rural residents in Guizhou Province, it is found that 1) performance of economic governance, political governance performance, livelihood service performance and grass-roots government trust all have a direct positive impact on the political participation of rural residents; and 2) in economic governance performance, political governance performance and livelihood service performance, grass-roots government trust also plays a promoting role on the political participation of rural residents. Necessity test found that a single condition variable could not cause a high degree of political participation of rural residents. Through configuration analysis, three effective configurations were found to achieve a high degree of political participation of rural residents. Based on this, the study suggests that a high degree of political participation of rural residents should be achieved through vigorous development of rural economy, improvement of political governance, promotion of trust building in grass-roots governments, and protection of people’s livelihood.

Key words: political participation, rural governance performance, trust of grassroots government, qualitative comparative analysis of fuzzy sets