At the beginning of the 21st century, with the rapid advancement of industrialization and urbanization, production factors such as population, capital, and land between urban and rural areas in China have gradually shifted to non-agricultural fields, the structure and function of rural territorial systems have been reconstructed and transformed therewith. In response to the relatively declining villages, the Chinese government proposed rural revitalization strategy. Taking the human–land relationship as the theoretical basis and functional changes of rural region as the main line, the study analyzes the characteristics of rural reconstruction, interprets the rural transformation mechanism and deconstructs paths of rural revitalization by using the rural reconstruction index, the model of rural transformation measurement and rural spatial transformation effect. The case study shows that: (1) Rural reconstruction in Jianghan Plain is characterized by temporal continuity and spatial imbalance. The periodical changes presents from social-reconstruction-dominated, economic-reconstruction-dominated to spatial reconstruction -dominated. The distribution of high values varied from the U-type to O-type along the main transportation routes, while that of low values alternated between points (hinterlands of the Plain) and lines from spatial viewpoint. (2) The driving mechanism of rural transformation was the coupling effect of the exogenous drivers and endogenous responses. The standardized regression coefficient between the drivers and the changes to rural regional functions is 0.766. The endogenous response is mainly manifested as the negative effect of the rural spatial reconstruction on the territorial agriculture-oriented function. (3) The key path of rural revitalization facilitated the optimization of regional functions through reorganization of the rural elements in Jianghan Plain. It is the strategic choice of rural areas to implement regional function zoning and realize the balance of spatial function. The research results can provide inspiration for theoretical research on rural geography, and provide policy and method support for rural revitalization in case areas.

Institutions hold a crucial influence over human behavior and economic development. Using 3791 agricultural land transfer-out households from the 2021 Chinese Social Survey (CSS) data as the research sample, this study employs Logit, IV-Probit, and Heckman models to explore the influence of social morality—a crucial informal institution—on farmers’ land transfer behavior from a cognitive perspective, examining the moderating factors and underlying mechanisms between the two. The findings indicate the following: (1) The perception of social morality level significantly influences land transfer behavior; when farmers perceive lower social morality, their land transfer behavior is inhibited. (2) The perception of the level of rule of law significantly negatively moderates the relationship between perception of social morality level and agricultural land transfer behavior. That is, the negative impact of the perception of social morality level on agricultural land transfer is effectively mitigated as the perceived level of rule of law increases. (3) The suppression of land transfer by perceptions of social morality stems primarily from the significant weakening of social trust, which is a crucial mechanism driving land transfer. By focusing on social morality and adopting a cognitive perspective, this study explores the impact of this informal institution on agricultural land transfer behavior. It holds significant theoretical value for deepening the understanding of informal institutional changes and enhancing the development of agricultural land markets in rural China.