Quantifying multiple effects of land finance on urban sprawl: Empirical study on 284 prefectural-level cities in China

Abstract

Under the public land regime, China's urban sprawl is primarily influenced by local governments' land finance incentives, compared with market-oriented forces dominant in Western countries. The study used baseline, geospatial, and nonlinear regressions to quantify land finance's temporal, spatial, and scaling effects on urban sprawl at a national scale. Baseline regressions showed that the effects of land finance on urban sprawl varied over time, initially strengthening and then gradually weakening, reflecting decreasing importance of land finance. Geospatial regressions indicated that the effects of land finance on urban sprawl increased from eastern to western cities, reflecting spatial diffusion from developed coast to developing inland. Furthermore, nonlinear regressions revealed that land finance exerted complex effects on urban sprawl, with high-ranking cities' reduction in land-driven development but low-ranking cities' reliance on land-based sprawl. These results highlighted the importance of transiting overreliance on land finance to curb urban sprawl.