Spatiotemporal Evolution and Pattern Differences of Environmental Sanitation Facilities in Rural China: Taking the Improvement of Water and Latrines as an Example

Abstract

Based on the panel data of water and latrine improvement in rural China from 2003 to 2016, this paper explores the spatiotemporal evolution pattern of rural sanitation facilities and analyzes the spatial heterogeneity of influencing factors of rural sanitation facilities by using the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) model. The conclusions are as follows: the gap between the western and the eastern regions of China is gradually narrowing; the spatial differences of rural environmental sanitation facilities in provinces were obvious, showing high-high and low-low agglomeration types. Additionally, years of education per capita, population density, and government investment all have a significant positive impact on the improvement of water and latrines. And the proportion of the minority population has a significant negative impact on the improvement of water. The net income per capita, traffic density, and residential investment per capita are significantly positively correlated with the improvement of water and latrines. But the difference is that the impact on the improvement of water is an obviously east-west band and decreases successively, and the impact on the improvement of latrines shows a dual pattern of polarization between north and south.