A Study On Impact Of High Speed Rail On The Spatial Distribution Of Regional Consumption

Consumption has always been a hot issue in academic circles.Consumption is the ultimate goal of economic development,and it is an important driving force for economic development.Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has developed rapidly,especially after joining the WTO.China’s international trade has grown so rapidly that China has become the world’s largest exporter.The proportion of net exports and investment in GDP has increased year by year,but the growth of consumption has always been relatively slow.After the 1990 s,the growth of consumption has always lagged behind that of GDP.In the aftermath of 2008 financial crisis,in order to promote economic recovery,China launched a large amount of infrastructure construction.Although it played a role in boosting the economy at that time,it also pushed up asset prices and caused problems such as excess manufacturing capacity.While the pulling effect of investment and net exports on the economy is gradually weakening,how to boost the economy by expanding domestic demand become the focus of attention.At present,China’s economic development has entered a new normal,economic restructuring and the transformation of power are accelerating,and the role of consumption in driving the economy has become increasingly important.The development of transportation has always been inseparable from the economic development.The improvement of transportation conditions has affected the flow of people and logistics costs,and the most direct impact is on interregional trade activities,and then it has an impact on the economy.At the supply side,the improvement of traffic conditions has made interregional exchanges more frequent,which has brought about effects such as the optimal allocation of resources and factors,professional division of labor,industrial agglomeration,and market integration,thereby promoting economic growth.On the demand side,the development of transportation has reduced people’s travel costs,enabling people to obtain more information in regional flows and face richer choices of goods,thereby promoting the integration of commodity markets,the growth in consumption,and promoting the welfare of the consumers.High-speed rail is a new type of transportation.Its convenience,speed,and safety make it a major innovation in the field of transportation.Compared with traditional railways,the characteristics of high-speed rail such as high speed,high frequency,and strong comfort have changed the time distance between cities,which will promote the further urbanization of urban agglomerations,and at the same time promote the communication and connection between urban agglomerations.Compared with air transportation,the safty and carrying capabilities of high-speed rail make it more advantageous,so that passengers have more time and comfort trade-offs.Therefore,the development of high-speed rail will change the transportation pattern and further change the regional economic pattern.For residents’ consumption,the convenience and comfort of transportation itself is an important part of consumer’s welfare,so changes in transportation conditions will have a huge impact on residents’ consumption.The development of high-speed rail will also bring about a change in the consumption pattern.This paper study the impact of the development of high-speed rail on the consumption pattern and how this impact manifests itself in regional space.This paper examines the spatial impact of the opening of high-speed rail on consumption from a progressive perspective,and focuses on the following questions: how could the opening of high-speed rail has an impact on consumption? Is there a diffusion effect of consumption（spillover effect）? How does the spillover effect operate? Whether the development of high-speed rail has brought about agglomeration of consumption,and whether the cities with high consumption before been strengthened? Finally,whether the impact of high-speed rail opening on consumption will change when the network develops to a certain scale.Is there a threshold of coverage of high-speed rail above which the impact of opening of a new high-speed rail on consumption changes? The paper is organized as follows.Section 4 describes and analyzes the current situation of Chinese residents’ consumption.In this section,we analyze the characteristics of total consumption,levels,and ratios of residents at the national,provincial,and prefecture-level cities,and summarize the development status and problems of residents’ consumption.We construct the consumption location entropy and compare the development of consumption across regions with the net consumption outflow indicators.Further more,this section focuses on the analysis of the spatial characteristics of residents’ consumption,and uses the Moran index to analyze the spatial correlation characteristics of provincial and prefecture-level regional consumption.We uses the Gini coefficient to analyze the distribution characteristics of residents’ consumption.We uses the regional center of gravity of consumption to analyze the characteristics of spatial changes of regional consumption.Through comparative analysis,it is found that there is still a large imbalance in China’s regional consumption.This imbalance behaves differently in different regions and the direction of change is different.This section also conducts a descriptive analysis of the environmental characteristics of residents’ consumption,and performs cluster analysis on prefecture-level cities based on the actual environmental characteristics of consumption-related indicators of consumption resources,to lay the foundation for subsequent in-depth analysis of the consumption of different types of prefecture-level cities.Section 5 analyzes the impact of the opening of the high-speed rail on urban space to consumption and the spillover effect between cities.This section uses panel data from 285 prefecture-level cities and above from 2007 to 2017,and adopts a spatial panel measurement model to conduct an empirical analysis of the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on total consumption and consumption levels.The results indicate that the development of high-speed rail has a stimulating effect and a spillover effect on local consumption.The opening of high-speed rail has no obvious impact on regional consumption,and it is the number of high-speed rail that have a significant impact of regional consumption.Examination by region shows that the construction of high-speed rail has a growth effect on residents’ consumption and can reshape the consumption pattern of urban residents in the corresponding regions.When the investment,import and export,and manufacturing growth of central cities and cities with insufficient resources are weak,the opening of the high-speed rail can bring the core force to stimulate consumption in the city.Section 6 of the paper,based on the consumption life cycle-permanent income model,verifies whether the impact of consumption between prefecture level cities has become more significant due to the opening of high-speed rail,and provides a more concrete explanation for the spillover effect of consumption between prefecture level cities.This chapter uses the data of 285 prefecture level cities and above from 2007 to2017,and uses the dynamic spatial Dubin model to verify the "ratchet effect" and "demonstration effect" of consumption,and analyzes the long-term and short-term,direct and indirect performance of these effects.At the same time,the comparison is made in different regions.The results show that consumption has a significant "ratchet effect",the "ratchet effect" of consumption is greater than the "demonstration effect" of consumption.In terms of the impact of income on consumption,in the short run,the opening of high-speed railway plays an obvious role in the transmission of income on consumption.The "demonstration effect" of income on consumption does exist.In the long run,the lasting decision on consumption is always the economic growth and income increase of a region.In terms of the impact of consumption on consumption,The spillover effect of high-speed rail on consumption disappeared for a long time.The opening of high-speed rail has weakened the imbalance of consumption between regions to a certain extent.In short,the opening of high-speed railway can not directly lead to the improvement of urban consumption,and the way that prefecture level cities want to directly drive consumption through the opening of high-speed railway can not be realized generally.Finally,it is necessary to improve the local economy and the income level of residents to achieve the long-term and effective improvement of consumption.Section 7 explores the problem of equilibrium of spatial distribution.This section uses the panel data of 285 prefecture-level cities and above in China from 2003 to 2017,and considers the opening of high-speed rail as a "quasi-natural experiment." It uses a multi-phase double-difference model to examine the impact of the opening of highspeed rail on consumption aggregation.The results indicate that the opening of highspeed rail can promote consumption potential,consumption density,and consumer enterprise density,but the impact on consumer location entropy is not significant.Furthermore,the opening of high-speed rail does not aggravate the consumption imbalance across regions.In the analysis of the four regions of east,middle,west,and northeast,the opening of high-speed rail has strengthened the consumption of traditional consumption hotspots（east and northeast）,and has produced the effect of "beggar-thy-neighbor "（the central region has no significant negative coefficient）.The clustering of consumer companies in the east,west,and northeast will further exacerbate the imbalance of consumption in the future.In the comparison of resourcerich and ordinary cities,the opening of high-speed rail has benefited ordinary cities,but it has also strengthened the consumption of resource-rich cities,and the further increase in the density of consumer enterprises has exacerbated the imbalance between the two.Section 8 focuses on the impact of high-speed rail networks on consumption.This section uses data from 285 prefecture-level cities in China and panel threshold model with,“high-speed rail network scale” and “high-speed rail network node dominant position” as threshold indicators.We examine the impact of opening of high-speed rail on the consumption with the data of the whole country as well as that of three subareas（east,middle,and west）,by which we can find out different effect on different areas brought by high-speed rail network development.Results indicate that from the nationwide perspective,there is a network scale effect on the growth of consumption,level,and contribution rate.As the network scale increases,cities that access the highspeed rail network will benefit more.There is a threshold of coverage of high-speed rail at which the coefficient is maximal.Within the scope of the regional network,highspeed rail also have significant network effects.When the coverage rate of high-speed rail is between 40%-60%,the network scale effect of high-speed rail on consumption growth is maximal.When the coverage rate of high-speed rail is between 40%-60%,,cities that access the high-speed rail network can maximize the impact,enjoying the consumption growth effect brought by access to the high-speed rail network.The opening of the high-speed rail has a strengthening effect on cities where the urban consumption is dominant（the entropy of the consumption location is higher）,and the more prominent the position is,the more obvious the strengthening effect is.The opening of the high-speed rai has a weakening effect on the disadvantaged city.The opening of the high-speed rail does have a "siphon effect" on the nodes.The disadvantaged cities loss and the advantaged cities benefit.On the whole,this paper systematically analyzes the growth,spillover,ratchet effect,demonstration effect,aggregation effect and network threshold effect brought by the opening of high-speed rail to urban consumption.Through the analysis of these effects,the paper finds that the opening of high-speed railway has a positive impact on consumption on the whole,but different effects on consumption in different regions,and the impact of mechanism It’s different.Through the in-depth analysis of the industrial structure and the characteristics of the consumer industry of prefecture level cities,we can accurately grasp the effect of the opening of high-speed railway on it.Under the background of industrial transformation and consumption upgrading in China,all regions will play different roles in the division of labor of regional consumption market.Local governments should not blindly strive for infrastructure construction such as high-speed rail,but should start from their own industrial characteristics and pursue the development of high efficiency and low cost.