A Study Of Rural-urban Land Conversion Efficiency Of Metropolitan Areas In Socioeconomic Dual Transition

It is a critical period for China that economic structure is being adjusted and development pattern are changing,and new-type urbanization has become the engine leading the economic development.Relying on gathering capability of people and industries and the economic radiation capability,metropolitan areas have become major geographic units that load urbanization in China.Metropolitan areas are playing an important role in regional economic growth and of great significance to enhance China’s status in the global economy.The formation and development of metropolitan areas are based on the urban sprawl and industrialization.However,urban sprawl always encroaches on farmland.Problems then arise: insufficient supply of urban construction land coexist with extensive use of urban land,excessive land conversion from rural to urban areas,food security is been influenced,and irreversible destruction to ecological environment occur,which affect the implementation of the development strategy which coordinates different regional demands in China.For a long time Chinese government pays attention to urban economic growth rather than city’s expansion and utilization of land resources,which will cause imbalance between land use and economic and social development.To do the research on rural-urban land conversion(RULC),we must explore the relationship between the utilization and allocation of RULC and economic development,and maximize the economic outputs and minimize the amount of RULC.So that,the excessive RULC can be prevented,the land recourses can be used intensively and efficiently,and it can be avoided that metropolitan areas become the sensitive areas which are faced by a series of society,economy and ecosystem environment problems.Therefore,this study is not only related to the sustainability and stability of China’s regional economic development,but also is of great importance to social governance and ecological environment protection.This study focus on these key questions: What are the temporal and spatial features of the RULC efficiency of metropolitan areas in China? What environmental factors affect the RULC efficiency and how is the degree? How many are the optimal amount of the RULC for each metropolitan area and how to optimize? How does the RULC total factor productivity(TFP)change,and what are the components of the TFP? What is the law of the relationship between economic agglomeration and RULC efficiency? Firstly,by reviewing the relative researches,we constructed a methodology system to analyze the RULC efficiency based on clearly defining the concepts which related to the RULC efficiency.Secondly,this dissertation measured the RULC efficiency of metropolitan areas in China accounting for undesirable outputs and analyzed the components of TFP.Thirdly,we selected the influence factors from the natural,economical and social environment to do the regression analysis by econometric method,and got the mechanism of the environmental influences.Fourthly,we measured the loss of efficiency and put forward an efficiency optimization path.Lastly,we explored the law of the relationship between economic agglomeration and RULC efficiency of metropolitan areas from the perspectives of RULC allocation and utilization.The brief research contents and conclusions are as follows.Firstly,this dissertation analyzed the RULC efficiency of the 16 metropolitan areas in China in the period from 1999 to 2013 accounting for undesirable outputs(environmental pollution)by using the DEA model of SE-SBM.Totally,the allocation and utilization efficiency of the RULC was relatively high and there was a big gap between different metropolitan areas in China;The pure technical efficiencies(PTE)of RULC of the metropolitan areas which formed early and obtained advanced technologies were higher and the limiting factor for promoting the comprehensive efficiency(CE)was the technical innovation;The scale efficiency(SE)were generally higher than PTE and the RULC was the “power source” that promoted the development of metropolitan areas.From the perspective of time,the CE of the RULC declined from 1999 to 2001 followed an increase reaching at the highest(0.80)in 2004,and then decreased to the lowest(0.53)with an increase in 2012.From the perspective of space,the spatial distribution characteristics of the RULC efficiency of metropolitan areas in China were similar to the regional economic structure.The RULC efficiencies of the eastern metropolitan areas which were mostly at developing stage and mature stage were higher than that of the northeastern,central and western metropolitan areas which were mostly at emerging stage.Secondly,on the basis of measuring the RULC efficiency,this dissertation selected the influence factors from natural,economical and social environment,and constructed a Tobit regression model to analyze the influence effect of the environmental factors to the RULC.We found that: The environment that the metropolitan areas faced had a significant effect on their RULC efficiency;Whether the metropolitan area had an advantageous economic geographical condition affected its RULC efficiency most;The CE,PTE,SE and the stage of returns to scale of the metropolitan areas changed after the influence of environmental and random factors being removed,therefore,it is necessary to consider the effect of environmental and random factors when we measure the RULC efficiency.Thirdly,according to theoretical model and under the premise that outputs were constant,this dissertation analyzed the loss of RULC efficiency according to redundancy rate,determined the modification direction of RULC efficiency promotion according to the redundancy,and put forward the efficiency optimization path according to the sources of efficiency loss.In the existing environment condition,most of the metropolitan areas in China were in the situation that the input of RULC was excessive while the outputs were insufficient;By comparing the improvement extent of RULC amount of northeastern,eastern,central and western metropolitan areas before and after the influence of environmental and random factors being removed,we found that the improvement extents of RULC amount of northeastern,eastern,central metropolitan areas increased and that of western metropolitan areas decreased,and we could draw a conclusion that the natural,economical and social environment faced by northeastern,eastern,central metropolitan areas were more beneficial to reasonably and efficiently use the land resource(convert from rural to urban)than western metropolitan areas.Fourthly,this dissertation conducted a study on the TFP of RULC by using the Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index.The results showed that the average TFP of RULC of the metropolitan areas in China decreased during the 15 years from 1999 to2013,and the decrease of TFP was caused by the decrease of technical change.There are barriers in the development and promotion of the technique which can be used to reduce environment pollution and its side effect in the process of socioeconomic production with RULC participating,therefore,the production factors could not be used efficiently.We made a statistical test on the results of the RULC TFP with and without considering the undesirable output of the metropolitan areas in China by using the Wilcoxon Matched-pairs Signed-ranks Test,and found there was a significant difference between two sets of results.So it was reasonable and necessary to consider the undesirable output(environment pollution)of the socioeconomic production.The socioeconomic production of the metropolitan areas in China with RULC participating had experienced the process that the production was from environmentally unfriendly to friendly,and then became unfriendly during the period from 1999 to 2013.This dissertation selected the RULC“Innovators for Environmental Technology” from the metropolitan areas in 14 periods(two years apart)from 1999 to 2013.We found that: the innovators did not appear in every periods,but they concentrated in the periods 2000-2001,2002-2005,and 2007-2008;The numbers of time that Pearl River Delta,Yangtze River Delta and Wuhan metropolitan areas became innovators are the most,because these metropolitan areas had relatively high technique development degree and could use the advanced technique rationally to do the socioeconomic production with RULC participating,so they could limit the environment pollution to a relatively low degree and guaranteed their economic growth meanwhile.Lastly,this dissertation analyzed the coordination of economic agglomeration and RULC and the RULC efficiency of the metropolitan areas from two perspectives allocation and utilization of RULC in the process of socioeconomic production.And we explored the law of the relationship between economic agglomeration and RULC efficiency.Results indicated that: the coordination degree of RULC allocation and economic development was high,and the degree of RULC allocation imbalance is higher than that of economic agglomeration;The RULC allocation coordinated well with economic development in the three major mature metropolitan areas Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei,Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta,and their RULC efficiencies were relatively high,because they have regional advantages and got the policies supports;Most metropolitan areas in China belonged to the kind of developing metropolitan areas,the scale and speed of RULC were high,and blind and repeated construction existed,so coordination degree of RULC allocation and economic development was low and the RULC efficiency increased slowly in these metropolitan areas;Emerging metropolitan areas located in China’s borders and western regions were generally small in size and lagged in development,but they acquired fast development and continuous RULC efficiency improvement since 2008,and are exploring the innovations for more rational RULC allocation which fit their own characteristics.This dissertation did spatial autocorrelation analysis on coordination of economic agglomeration and RULC allocation and RULC efficiency.The results indicated that the coordination and efficiency had a significant and positive spatial correlation in the space region of China,that is to say,the coordination of economic agglomeration and RULC allocation was closely associated with RULC efficiency.