Agricultural land-use change and migration intentions among peri-urban landowners: A population–environment perspective from Indonesia
Peri-urban transformation increasingly reshapes land, livelihoods, and household mobility decisions across changing rural communities. This study examines migration intention among peri-urban rural landowners in Mulyoagung Village (Dermo and Jetak Ngasri hamlets), Malang Regency, East Java, Indonesia, where agricultural land use is changing alongside shifts in rural livelihoods, land values, and settlement conditions. Framed within a population–environment perspective and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the study assesses associations between attitude toward migration, perceived behavioral control (PBC), and subjective norms and migration intention. A cross-sectional survey of 86 landowners was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling with 5,000 bootstrap subsamples. Attitude showed the strongest positive association with migration intention (β = 0.591, t = 5.631, p < 0.001), followed by PBC (β = 0.244, t = 2.012, p = 0.045), whereas subjective norms showed a smaller and statistically nonsignificant association (β = 0.121, t = 1.270, p = 0.205). The model explained 58% of the variance in migration intention (R2 = 0.580). These results indicate that, within this peri-urban land-conversion setting, migration intention is more strongly associated with favorable evaluations of migration and perceived capability than with the retained indicators of normative social evaluation. The study extends population–environment and migration research by situating TPB-based intention formation within agrarian transition, land commodification, and changing rural livelihood conditions. Policy implications emphasize place-based services, livelihood-transition support, farmland-sensitive spatial planning, and participatory land governance, while recognizing that implementation depends on institutional capacity, regulatory enforcement, and political–economic conditions surrounding land conversion.
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