Research On The Impact Of High-speed Railway On Urban Consumption In China

After more than a decade of high-speed railway construction and operation,China’s high-speed railways have achieved a bend in the road and entered the leading ranks,becoming China’s calling card.The rapid development of China’s high-speed railways has attracted worldwide attention.Today,as the core force of China’s transport system,high-speed railways are playing an increasingly prominent role as the backbone of China’s urban economic development.In recent years,China’s economy is at an important stage of transformation and upgrading to a consumption-driven economy,with consumption playing an increasingly important role in driving economic development and becoming a powerful "booster" for economic growth.In the current context of the high-speed railway era,how to fully release the "high-speed railway dividend",expand domestic demand and boost consumption through the high-speed railway network,and realise the internal circulation of domestic economic development in all aspects of production,distribution,circulation and consumption,has become an important issue to be urgently studied and explored.On this basis,combining high-speed railways with urban consumption and exploring the impact of the opening of high-speed railways on urban consumption in China is an important topic for the formation of a new urban economic cycle model.At present,China’s high-speed railways have formed a networked operation mode,while the development structure of regional consumption economy also tends to be networked.Therefore,based on the research perspective of network,this study constructs a spatial network of high-speed railways and a spatially linked network of urban consumption,analyses the network characteristics in terms of both network structure and network nodes,and further employs QAP analysis to examine the synergy and mutual promotion relationship between the two.To estimate the impact effect of high-speed railways on urban consumption,panel data of 285 prefecturelevel cities across China from 2005-2018 were used,and the variability of this impact effect across locations,city sizes and consumption scales was examined using the double difference and quantitative methods.In exploring the impact mechanism,a mediating effects model was used to examine the role of population mobility,urbanisation,productive service agglomeration and market accessibility in the process of high-speed railways affecting urban consumption,while the nodal degree centrality of high-speed railways was included in the research model to avoid bias in the results of previous studies and estimate the urban consumption effect of high-speed railways.The spatial spillover of the consumption effect of high-speed rail is discussed from a spatial perspective,and the optimal spatial radius of the urban consumption effect of high-speed rail is further explored,i.e.the optimal spatial radius of the consumption level of neighbouring cities by the high-speed rail network is explored.The results show that:(1)As time goes by,the number of node cities connected to the high-speed railway network has increased year by year,the density of the highspeed railway network has steadily increased,and the overall network has become more complicated.However,urban consumption networks do not exhibit the same temporal evolutionary characteristics,but rather show strong stability.(2)There is a synergistic relationship between the high-speed railway network and the consumption network,which can coordinate and promote each other.The improvement of the national high-speed railway network has greatly improved the flow efficiency of production factors between cities,and plays an important basic role in the formation of urban consumption network and the improvement of consumption level.(3)The opening of high-speed rail can significantly promote the improvement of urban consumption level,but there are obvious differences in the consumption effects of high-speed rail on cities of different locations and scales.(4)With the rising quantile of total urban consumption,the positive impact of the opening of high-speed rail on urban consumption shows an inverted "N" trend,which first drops and then rises.(5)The opening of high-speed rail can improve urban consumption level through population mobility,agglomeration of producer services and improvement of market accessibility.(6)The opening of high-speed railway not only promotes the consumption of high-speed railway cities,but also has spatial spillover effect on the consumption level of surrounding cities,thus promoting the development of consumption level of neighboring cities.(7)The effective radius of high-speed railway is 100-500 km away from the central city,and it produces the optimal effect at300 km.Cities within 100 kilometers away from the central city will have no significant consumption effect due to siphon phenomenon.While cities more than 500 kilometers away from the central city will weaken the driving effect of high-speed railway on cities due to too long distance.The innovations of this paper mainly include:(1)this paper discusses the network structure and network characteristics of high-speed railway network and urban consumption network,and verifies the synergistic and mutually promoting relationship between high-speed railway network and urban consumption network with the help of QAP correlation analysis and QAP regression analysis,so as to provide a logical starting point for the study of the impact of high-speed railway on urban consumption.(2)Determining the impact of the opening of high-speed railways on urban consumption not only expands existing research perspectives and research ideas and fills a gap in the study of high-speed railways and consumption,but also enriches the study of the factors influencing urban consumption,provides a basis for validating existing theoretical studies and expands the ideas for subsequent research.(3)It is found that the impact of high-speed railway on different regions,cities with different population sizes and cities with different consumption sizes is different,which helps the government to promote high-speed railway construction and formulate consumption policies according to local conditions.(4)Building on existing research using the ’0-1’ dummy variable to measure high-speed rail,this study provides an alternative approach to subsequent research based on a network perspective,focusing on the centrality of nodes and the breadth of connectivity in high-speed rail cities.(5)It enriches the research on the formation mechanism of urban consumption effect of high-speed railway,reveals the mechanism role of population mobility,producer service agglomeration and market accessibility in the process of high-speed railway affecting urban consumption,and puts forward three internal transmission chains of the impact of the opening of high-speed railway on urban consumption,namely: The three paths of "high-speed rail-population mobility-urban consumption" 、 "high-speed railway-producer service agglomeration-urban consumption" and "high-speed rail-market accessibility-urban consumption" uncover the "black box" between high-speed railway and urban consumption and provide a supporting basis and scientific reference for the formulation of relevant policies.(6)The spatial Dobbin model is innovatively introduced into the research to explore the spatial spillover effect of high-speed rail consumption.By constructing a spatial weight matrix and purposefully using urban high-speed rail network data and consumption data,the spatial spillover effect of high-speed rail on urban consumption is explored,and the effective radius of action of high-speed rail in adjacent areas is examined,providing empirical evidence to grasp the spatial impact of high-speed rail networks on urban consumption.