Assessing the Impact of Government Behavior on Regional High-Quality Development: A Case of Fiscal Expenditures on People’s Livelihoods in China

Abstract

Government fiscal support is an important way to improve social welfare and enhance the protection of people’s livelihood. This paper uses the entropy weight TOPSIS method, fixed effect model, two-stage least squares regression, moderating effect model, and mediating effect model to comparatively analyze the level of high-quality development of the region and explore the impact and mechanism of livelihood expenditures on the high-quality development of the region. The findings show that increasing government expenditures on people’s livelihoods can effectively improve regional high-quality development, but the degree of marginal improvement varies with different periods and locations. People’s livelihood expenditure could promote sustainable regional development by increasing the consumption level of residents. Urbanization could strengthen the positive effect of livelihood expenditure on regional high-quality development. This study enriches the theoretical research on institutional economics and explores the effect and role of government behavior in the process of high-quality development from the perspective of livelihood expenditure.