The differences in the heritage perspectives of key stakeholders form an indispensable basis for formulating appropriate conservation strategies for living heritage. However, in existing practices, the differences in heritage perspectives between experts and local residents, who are both key stakeholders, often arise from expert experiences rather than being accurately measured. This study regarded traditional Chinese villages in the Luzhong region as a living heritage case for investigation and quantified such differences. Initially, this study provided a comprehensive description of living heritage using four dimensions: heritage value, heritage attributes, heritage composition, and heritage characteristics. Subsequently, a questionnaire tailored to traditional Chinese villages was developed, and a survey was conducted in the sample villages, resulting in 394 valid responses. According to the Pearson chi-square tests, the findings suggest that expert and local resident respondents showed slight disagreement regarding heritage attributes (x² = 5.619); however, they presented varying degrees of differences concerning heritage value (x² = 36.066) and heritage composition (x² = 36.525), accompanied by distinct preferences. Furthermore, significant discrepancies were evident regarding heritage characteristics. Regarding the four aspects of heritage characteristics, there was a slight difference in the symbiosis of heritage elements (x² = 3.877) but significant differences in the local resident as a heritage element (x² = 36.525); there was a minor difference in vitality and continuity (x² = 3.709) but a rare contradiction for integrity (x² = 47.649). This study can furnish case data support for surmounting the drawbacks of blindly relying on expert experiences, particularly by integrating local perspectives to safeguard living heritage globally.

As heritage cognition evolves, aligning conceptual understanding with conservation strategies becomes essential for effective practice. This study develops the Heritage Cognition–Conservation Paradigm Correspondence Framework, a methodological tool designed to evaluate the alignment between heritage cognition and conservation paradigms. Methodologically, the framework is constructed through document analysis, conceptual classification, and framing co-construction. Building on a critical review of the development trajectory of heritage conservation, it integrates four cognitive phases and three conservation paradigms into a dual-axis matrix, operationalized through six analytical dimensions for heritage cognition and four for conservation paradigms. The framework is subsequently applied through a case study of Traditional Chinese Villages, demonstrating its diagnostic capacity and analytical utility. The case study reveals a significant misalignment: while official discourse reflects pluralistic heritage thinking (within the most advanced, fourth cognitive phase), conservation practice remains rooted in value-based logics and material-based approaches (within the initial paradigms). This misalignment stems from fragmented object recognition, form-focused objectives, and top–down governance structures that marginalize local agency and overlook cultural processes as the heritage nature of those villages. By establishing and operationalizing the correspondence framework, this study provides a transferable tool for diagnosing cognition–practice disjunctions across heritage contexts. Beyond its empirical findings, the study advances a methodological contribution for heritage conservation and advocates a strategic shift toward process-oriented, community-embedded approaches that emphasize cultural continuity, reframed objectives, and participatory governance.

Traditional villages in China constitute a newly proposed category of cultural heritage. It transcends the existing demarcation between tangible and intangible heritage categories and represents a systematic and living heritage. Within these villages, the representations of Chinese civilization, such as traditional residential buildings, village conventions and folk customs, traditional handicrafts, agricultural landscapes, have been created, inherited, and employed. Traditional villages are regarded as the ‘gene bank’ and ‘living fossil’ for China's traditional culture. In the conservation practice regarding the built environment of traditional villages, what truly matters is not the preservation of existing traditional houses or streets, but the long-established spatial order or rules that have steered the settlements' development for thousands of years. Hence, the identification and upkeep of the spatial genes guiding the development of residential settlements in traditional Chinese villages are of supreme significance. This research adopts genetic analysis approaches to summarize the construction regulations of traditional Chinese settlements and interpret their significance and cultural connotations. Subsequently, with Sandefan Village as a case, it utilizes the logical framework of gene identification - decoding - expression to systematically investigate, extract, and analyse the spatial genes of traditional villages, and further summarizes the strategies for the dynamic conservation of traditional villages based on safeguarding their spatial genes.

Traditional villages serve as crucial places for the living transmission and conservation of Chinese cultural heritage. Yet many existing conservation practices, by emphasizing the technical repair of heritage elements rather than their symbiotic and systemic vitality, have failed to sustain those villages' cultural presence and reproduction. This imbalance has produced the dilemma often described as "cultural presence without effective articulation", triggering debates over both "de-activated protection", and "destructive preservation". Grounded in the theory of living heritage, this study adopts the biological metaphor of a "phenotypic expression system" to conceptualize the chain of cultural expression. It advances the "Relationship-Object-Practice" (ROP) framework, which integrates three interdependent dimensions: explicit heritage elements (object dimension), implicit heritage elements (relationship dimension), and cultural practices (practice dimension). Based on an empirical case study of Lijiatuan village in Shandong province, the investigation reveals that although the village retains a relatively complete set of heritage resources, the relationship dimension has not exerted sufficient efficacy in sustaining the living practice of heritage. Community networks have become weakened in their ability to regulate and activate collective participation, while the practice dimension has been narrowly conceived, diverting attention away from mechanisms that support cultural expression and reproduction. Consequently, the object dimension has suffered from inadequate reintegration of everyday functions, leaving the village exposed to the risk of cultural deactivation, in which heritage persists in appearance but loses its living significance. In response, this paper proposes a conservation turn oriented toward the living expression of heritage. From the relational dimension, it advocates collaborative governance that privileges community leadership while incorporating external assistance; from the object dimension, it permits the adaptive transformation of heritage elements to meet changing social needs; and from the practice dimension, it calls for systematic monitoring and carefully calibrated intervention to prevent cultural stagnation without suppressing organic evolution. Through this orientation, the paradigm of traditional village conservation can shift from "elemental maintenance" to "cultural sustainability", ensuring not only the preservation of heritage resources but also the regeneration of cultural vitality as a dynamic and evolving system of life.