Study Of The Correlation Between Airport Scale And Regional Economy Development

With the development of the air transport in China, the construction of airports continues to accelerate in this country whereas some problems are turning out. To analyze the intrinsic relationship between the scale of an airport and regional economy will contribute to the reconfirmation of an airport’s role and its direction of development. Most of the previous studies focus on the correlation between national air transport volume and the national economy(or simply the national GDP), and the research on the relationship between regional economic development and the airport fail to pay enough attention to the scope of the airport’s hinterland. Therefore, a targeted research is made in this paper.The paper firstly defines the concept of airport scale and defines the scope of the regional economy as the airport hinterland economy. Then an analysis of the interaction mechanism of airport scale and regional economic development is made and that the process is recognized as a benign interaction cycle. Then the paper separately elaborates the regional economy’s role as the foundation for the airport’s development and the airport’s role in boosting the regional economy.To verify the relationship between the airport scale and the scope of its hinterland, the paper combines two methods-- the Wilson Model and the Layers Method-- to estimate the airport hinterland. Then the paper takes Nanjing airport as an example to estimate its scope of hinterland with Wilson model and compared the results with those of airports nearby. And the combination use of the Layers method and Wilson model is applied to the further analysis of Nanjing airport’s hinterland.In order to quantitatively analyze the relationship between the airport scale and regional economy, this paper establishes two SVAR model respectively on the correlation between the airport cargo throughput and regional economy, and between the airport passenger throughput and regional economy. Structural impulse response analysis and variance decomposition analysis are made for further verification of the correlations. The paper clarifies the current situation of the airport and regional economy development in the end and offers policy advice.