{"title":"Land finance and urban Sprawl: Evidence from prefecture-level cities in China","authors":"Binbin Yu , Xinru Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2024.103074","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Local government dependence on land finance (LDF) is a relevant cause of urban sprawl (URBS) in China. This study analyses the theoretical mechanism of how the financing of land influences URBS from three aspects of land, economy and population. Night-time light data (NTLD) is then used to construct URBS indicators, after which the mechanism and spatial spillover effect of LDF on URBS is empirically tested by using both Chinese urban data and the Dynamic Spatial Durbin model (SDM). The results indicate that: (1) LDF has both a significant positive direct impact and a spatial spillover effect on URBS, indicating that an increase in LDF revenue in a region can significantly promote the URBS in that region. At the same time, the URBS expansion degree of adjacent areas will also be affected by an increase in local land fiscal revenue, with the effect more prominent in the short term than in the long term. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. (2) From the perspective of land sprawl, economic sprawl and population sprawl, it is found that there are obvious differences in the effect of LDF on the path of URBS. LDF can significantly promote urban land sprawl, especially industrial land sprawl. LDF effectively inhibits urban economic sprawl, in large part, because LDF brings with it both diseconomies of scale and a technology restraint effect to economic sprawl which is stronger than either the scale economy effect or the industrial agglomeration effect. The effect of LDF on population spread is not obvious. The above research conclusions provide significant policy implications for how land finance can effectively support urban construction and optimise local government financial structure and urban spatial layout.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":6.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Habitat International","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197397524000742","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"DEVELOPMENT STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Local government dependence on land finance (LDF) is a relevant cause of urban sprawl (URBS) in China. This study analyses the theoretical mechanism of how the financing of land influences URBS from three aspects of land, economy and population. Night-time light data (NTLD) is then used to construct URBS indicators, after which the mechanism and spatial spillover effect of LDF on URBS is empirically tested by using both Chinese urban data and the Dynamic Spatial Durbin model (SDM). The results indicate that: (1) LDF has both a significant positive direct impact and a spatial spillover effect on URBS, indicating that an increase in LDF revenue in a region can significantly promote the URBS in that region. At the same time, the URBS expansion degree of adjacent areas will also be affected by an increase in local land fiscal revenue, with the effect more prominent in the short term than in the long term. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. (2) From the perspective of land sprawl, economic sprawl and population sprawl, it is found that there are obvious differences in the effect of LDF on the path of URBS. LDF can significantly promote urban land sprawl, especially industrial land sprawl. LDF effectively inhibits urban economic sprawl, in large part, because LDF brings with it both diseconomies of scale and a technology restraint effect to economic sprawl which is stronger than either the scale economy effect or the industrial agglomeration effect. The effect of LDF on population spread is not obvious. The above research conclusions provide significant policy implications for how land finance can effectively support urban construction and optimise local government financial structure and urban spatial layout.
地方政府对土地财政的依赖是中国城市无序扩张(URBS)的一个相关原因。本研究从土地、经济和人口三个方面分析了土地财政如何影响城市无序扩张的理论机制。然后,利用中国城市数据和动态空间杜宾模型(SDM),实证检验了土地融资对城市无序扩张(URBS)的影响机制和空间溢出效应。结果表明(1)LDF 对 URBS 具有显著的正向直接影响和空间溢出效应,表明一个地区 LDF 收入的增加能够显著促进该地区 URBS 的发展。同时,相邻地区 URBS 的扩张程度也会受到地方土地财政收入增加的影响,短期效应比长期效应更为突出。经过一系列稳健性检验,这一结论仍然成立。(2)从土地蔓延、经济蔓延和人口蔓延的角度看,LDF 对 URBS 路径的影响存在明显差异。LDF 能够明显促进城市土地的扩张,尤其是工业用地的扩张。LDF 能够有效抑制城市经济扩张,这在很大程度上是因为 LDF 既带来了规模不经济效应,又对经济扩张产生了技术约束效应,这种效应比规模经济效应和产业集聚效应都要强。地方发展框架对人口扩散的影响并不明显。上述研究结论为土地财政如何有效支持城市建设、优化地方政府财政结构和城市空间布局提供了重要的政策启示。
期刊介绍:
Habitat International is dedicated to the study of urban and rural human settlements: their planning, design, production and management. Its main focus is on urbanisation in its broadest sense in the developing world. However, increasingly the interrelationships and linkages between cities and towns in the developing and developed worlds are becoming apparent and solutions to the problems that result are urgently required. The economic, social, technological and political systems of the world are intertwined and changes in one region almost always affect other regions.