Spatial Econometric Analysis of the Relationship between Urban Land and Regional Economic Development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Development Region

Against the background of coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, it is of great significance to quantitatively reveal the contribution rate of the influencing factors of urban land for optimizing the layout of urban land across regions and innovating the inter-regional urban land supply linkage. However, the interaction effects and spatial effects decomposition have not been well investigated in the existing research studies on this topic. In this study, based on the cross-sectional data in 2015 and using the spatial lag model, spatial error model and spatial Durbin model, we analyzed the relationship between urban land and regional economic development at the county level in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The results show that: (1) there are endogenous interaction effects of urban land, and the growth of urban land in a county will drive the corresponding growth of urban land in neighboring counties; (2) the local population, average wages, highway mileage density, and actual utilization of foreign capital have positive effects on the scale of urban land in local and neighboring counties; local GDP in the secondary/tertiary sector and the urbanization rate have positive effects on local urban land scale, but negative effects on the urban land scale of neighboring counties; (3) the contribution degree of the direct effect is ranked as follows: GDP in the secondary/tertiary sector > total population > urbanization rate. The order of factors with a significant spatial spillover effect on the scale of urban land in neighboring counties is as follows: average wages > total population > highway mileage density. The GDP in secondary/tertiary sector, population, and urbanization rate are the main influencing factors for the scale of urban land at the county level in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. It is an important finding that average wages are the most prominent among the spatial spillovers. We should attach importance to the spillover effect of geographic space and construct an urban spatial pattern coordinated with economic development.