Abstract
Transportation is generally perceived as a catalyst for economic development. This has been highlighted in previous studies. However, less attention has been paid to examine the relationship between economy and transport demand by exploring spatially cross-sectional data, especially for countries with significant regional economic imbalance, like China. In this article, we assess the economic influence of intercity multimodal transport demand at the prefecture level in China. Spatial autoregressive regression models are used to examine the impact of transport demand on economy by deep analysis of transport modes (land, air, and water) and regions (eastern, central, and western). Through contrasting results from spatial lag model and spatial error model with those from the ordinary least square, this study finds that the estimation results can become more accurate by controlling for spatial autocorrelation, especially at the national level. Through rigorous analysis it is identified that except for water passenger traffic, all other intercity transport demand significantly contribute to a city’s economic development level in gross domestic product. In particular, air transport demands distribute more evenly and are estimated with the highest beta coefficients at both national and regional levels. In addition, the beta coefficients for land, air and water transportation are estimated with different magnitudes and significances at the national and regional levels. This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on the relationship between intercity multimodal transport demand and economic development level. Findings from this paper provide planning makers with valid and efficient strategies to better develop the economy by leveraging the special “⊣” cluster pattern of economic development and the benefits of air transportation.
Highlights
Transportation is widely acknowledged as an important catalyst for economic development, at the regional, national, as well as international level [1,2,3,4]
The estimated coefficients for total passenger traffic and total freight volume are 0.308 and 0.469, respectively, both of which are significant at the 1% level
Estimated with the positive coefficient of 257.04, the dummy variable of municipality or not is highly related to Gross domestic product (GDP). This result indicates that there are other factors that affect the economic development level. Such as the municipality of Shanghai, it is clear that the current levels of economic development and transportation demand are very high
Summary
Transportation is widely acknowledged as an important catalyst for economic development, at the regional, national, as well as international level [1,2,3,4]. Few studies conducted to explore how the transportation-economy relationship depends on spatial autocorrelation, regional imbalance or intercity transport modes, especially for the rapid and unbalanced development contexts, such as China. This study seeks to make up this gap by providing a comprehensive description of spatial transportation-economy relationship through investigating the intercity multimodal transportation data. As China has long executed a biased development policy, the transportation and economic development have continuously experienced cross-regional inequality. This case provides a rare perspective to investigate the influence of spatial autocorrelation on the transportation-economy relationship.
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