Farmers are central local actors in agricultural heritage conservation, and understanding the decision processes underlying their participation is essential for long-term and effective conservation. Using the Shexian Dryland Stone Terraced System, a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, as a case study, this study develops an integrated stakeholder-Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework. Economic benefits and government support are modeled as external antecedents, and structural equation modeling is used to test how these antecedents, the core TPB constructs, participation intention, and conservation behavior are related. The results show that subjective norm showed the strongest association with participation intention; economic benefits have significant indirect associations with participation intention and self-reported conservation behavior through the core TPB constructs; and government support has the largest estimated total association with self-reported conservation behavior, exceeding the estimated association between participation intention and self-reported conservation behavior. The study extends the application of TPB to agricultural heritage conservation and identifies key modeled pathways associated with farmers’ participation, providing policy-relevant empirical evidence to inform efforts to strengthen farmer participation in heritage conservation.

Traditional villages are important carriers of rural cultural heritage, yet their spatio-temporal distribution and underlying mechanisms remain insufficiently understood, particularly regarding the interaction between environmental and socio-cultural drivers over long historical periods. Focusing on 131 nationally recognized traditional villages in southern Hebei, China, this study integrates GIS-based spatial analysis with historical interpretation to examine their spatial patterns, temporal evolution, and driving factors from the pre-Sui period to the Qing Dynasty and post-Qing period. The results show that traditional villages exhibit a highly clustered and uneven distribution, primarily concentrated in mountain-front zones in the western and southwestern parts of the region. Spatial analysis reveals a multi-core clustering structure, and spatial autocorrelation confirms that this pattern is statistically significant. Temporally, village formation follows a non-linear process of concentration, expansion, and stabilization, with the Ming Dynasty representing a key peak period. The findings further indicate that dominant driving mechanisms shifted over time: early settlement was mainly constrained by environmental conditions, whereas later development increasingly depended on socio-cultural processes such as migration, defense, clan organization, and regional exchange. In the contemporary context, economic development and accessibility introduce complex and non-linear effects. These results suggest that traditional villages should be understood as dynamic cultural landscapes shaped by long-term human–environment interactions. This study provides an integrated framework for understanding rural settlement dynamics and offers insights relevant to rural heritage conservation and sustainable development in transitional regions.