Against the background of rural revitalization and Guangdong's "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands Project", university youth volunteer service has become an important force in supporting rural development. However, how professionalized participation is transformed into governance effectiveness still lacks systematic explanation. Based on survey data from university youth volunteers in Guangdong Province, this paper integrates embedded governance theory, empowerment theory, and resource dependence theory to construct an analytical framework of "professionalized participation--supply-demand matching--service effectiveness," and tests it using ordered Logistic regression and mediation effect models. The study finds that university youth volunteer service displays the characteristics of "strong motivation, moderate effectiveness, and weak matching." Professional matching is the key factor in improving service effectiveness; training, communication, resource support, and incentives all significantly promote contributions to rural revitalization and can also exert indirect effects by improving professional matching. Regional differences also affect the effect of professionalized participation, with eastern, western, and northern Guangdong facing more pronounced constraints in resource accessibility and cultural adaptation. The findings suggest that a demand-oriented approach should be used to promote effective coupling among youth capabilities, grassroots needs, and organizational resources, while improving training supervision, university-local collaboration, and differentiated implementation mechanisms.

Duan Jiexin, Duan Xiaoye, Wang Yunxia, Huang biao. The Mechanism and Empirical Test of Professionalized University Youth Volunteer Service Participation in Rural Revitalization—Based on Survey Data from Guangdong Province's "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands Project". Frontiers in Educational Research (2026), Vol. 9, Issue 6: 19-29. https://doi.org/10.25236/FER.2026.090603.

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