scholarly journals Factors on Spatial Heterogeneity of the Grain Production Capacity in the Major Grain Sales Area in Southeast China: Evidence from 530 Counties in Guangdong Province

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 206
Author(s):  
Wei Fang ◽  
Heliang Huang ◽  
Boxi Yang ◽  
Qiang Hu

Grain security is an essential issue for countries across the world. China has witnessed over the last decades not only a rapid growth in the volume of the grain production, but also a divergence in its geographical distributions. Existing studies on the influencing factors of grain production have overlooked thus spatial heterogeneity. This paper investigates the factors that cause the geographical heterogeneity in grain output levels in Guangdong province of China, in terms of land, labor and capital. To address the spatial attenuation effect of the influencing factors, we use the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) on samples of different spatial ranges, which include a total of 530 southern counties from 2015 to 2017. The results show that (a) the effect of land endowment on grain output vary across the east and the west, and between coastal and inland areas; (b) the effect of labor endowment on grain output are inconsistent in the sign and magnitude of the estimates across counties; (c) the effect of agricultural capital on grain production shows heterogeneity spatially (across the east and the west) and economically (across developed and less developed regions). We then analyze the potential mechanism behind this spatial heterogeneity, as well as its policy implications.

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 314
Author(s):  
Qianxi Zhang ◽  
Zehui Chen ◽  
Fei Li

Agricultural development is facing two problems: insufficient grain production and low profit of farmers. There is a contradiction between the government’s goal of increasing production and the farmer’s goal of increasing profit. Exploring the appropriate management scale of farmland under different objectives is of great significance to alleviate the conflict of interests between the government and farmers. In this study the Cobb-Douglas production function model was used to measure the appropriate management scale of farmland under different objectives in Shaanxi Province and analyze the regional differences. Under the two objectives, the appropriate management scale of the Loess Plateau was the largest in the three regions, followed by Qinba Mountains and Guanzhong Plain. Farmland area and quality were the main influencing factors for the appropriate management scale of farmland under the goal of maximizing the farmland yield, while the nonagricultural employment rate and farmland transfer rate were the main influencing factors under the goal of maximizing farmers’ profits. It is easy for Shaanxi Province to increase farmers’ profits, but more land needed to be transferred to increase farmland yield. These results suggest that in order to balance the goal of increasing yield and profit, the transfer of rural surplus labor should be promoted, and the nonagricultural employment rate should be improved. In Loess Plateau, restoring the ecological environment and enhancing the farmland quality. In Guanzhong Plain, avoiding urban land encroachment on farmland. In Qinba Mountains, developing farming techniques and moderately increasing the intensity of farmland exploit.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4194
Author(s):  
Yanhua Guo ◽  
Lianjun Tong ◽  
Lin Mei

Winning the battle against pollution and strengthening ecological protection in all respects are vital for promoting green development and building a moderately prosperous ecological civilization in China. Using the entropy weight method, this paper establishes and evaluates a comprehensive industrial pollution index that contains and synthesizes six major industrial pollutants (wastewater, COD, waste gas, SO2, NOx, and solid waste) in the 2006–2015 period. Subsequently, this paper studies the spatiotemporal characteristics and influencing factors of industrial pollution via the Moran index and spatial econometric analysis. The empirical results indicate that (1) the temporal evolution of the industrial pollution index is characterized by an overall trend of first decreasing and then increasing. (2) The industrial pollution index of each county has certain geographical disparities and significant spatially polarized characteristics in 2006, 2009, 2012, and 2015. (3) The Moran test shows that there is a relatively significant spatial autocorrelation of the industrial pollution index among counties and that the geographical distribution of the industrial pollution index tends to show clustering. (4) Spatial regression models that incorporate spatial factors better explain the influencing factors of industrial pollution. The economic development level, technological progress, and industrialization are negatively correlated with industrial pollution, while population density and industrial production capacity are positively correlated. (5) Consequently, as relevant policy recommendations, this paper proposes that environmental cooperation linkage mechanisms, environmental protection credit systems, and green technology innovation systems should be established in different geographical locations to achieve the goals of green county construction and sustainable development.


2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Meijie Chen ◽  
Yumin Chen ◽  
John P. Wilson ◽  
Huangyuan Tan ◽  
Tianyou Chu

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to many deaths and economic disruptions across the world. Several studies have examined the effect of corresponding health risk factors in different places, but the problem of spatial heterogeneity has not been adequately addressed. The purpose of this paper was to explore how selected health risk factors are related to the pandemic infection rate within different study extents and to reveal the spatial varying characteristics of certain health risk factors. An eigenvector spatial filtering-based spatially varying coefficient model (ESF-SVC) was developed to find out how the influence of selected health risk factors varies across space and time. The ESF-SVC was able to take good control of over-fitting problems compared with ordinary least square (OLS), eigenvector spatial filtering (ESF) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models, with a higher adjusted R2 and lower cross validation RMSE. The impact of health risk factors varied as the study extent changed: In Hubei province, only population density and wind speed showed significant spatially constant impact; while in mainland China, other factors including migration score, building density, temperature and altitude showed significant spatially varying impact. The influence of migration score was less contributive and less significant in cities around Wuhan than cities further away, while altitude showed a stronger contribution to the decrease of infection rates in high altitude cities. The temperature showed mixed correlation as time passed, with positive and negative coefficients at 2.42 °C and 8.17 °C, respectively. This study could provide a feasible path to improve the model fit by considering the problem of spatial autocorrelation and heterogeneity that exists in COVID-19 modeling. The yielding ESF-SVC coefficients could also provide an intuitive method for discovering the different impacts of influencing factors across space in large study areas. It is hoped that these findings improve public and governmental awareness of potential health risks and therefore influence epidemic control strategies.


1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amitai Etzioni

Relativism is in retreat on many fronts; it is much less clear what will replace it. One kind of relativism of special importance to international relations is the notion that members of one culture should not “judge” those of others—especially that the West should not pass judgment on the policies and values of other societies. If this facet of unbounded, normative pluralism is waning, too, what will take its place? Such a matter seems rather abstract, but its policy implications are many.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shijie Li ◽  
Chunshan Zhou ◽  
Shaojian Wang ◽  
Shuang Gao ◽  
Zhitao Liu

It is of great significance to investigate the determinants of urban form for shaping sustainable urban form. Previous studies generally assumed the determinants of urban form did not vary across spatial units, without taking spatial heterogeneity into account. In order to advance the theoretical understanding of the determinants of urban form, this study attempted to examine the spatial heterogeneity in the determinants of urban form for 289 Chinese prefecture-level cities using a geographically weighted regression (GWR) method. The results revealed the spatially varying relationship between urban form and its underlying factors. Population growth was found to promote urban expansion in most Chinese cities, and decrease urban compactness in part of the Chinese cities. Cities with larger administrative areas were more likely to have dispersed urban form. Industrialization was demonstrated to have no impact on urban expansion in cities located in the eastern coastal region of China, which constitutes the country’s most developed regions. Local financial revenue was found to accelerate urban expansion and increase urban shape irregularity in many Chines cities. It was found that fixed investment exerted a bidirectional impact on urban expansion. In addition, urban road networks and public transit were also identified as the determinants of urban form for some cities, which supported the complex urban systems (CUS) theory. The policy implications emerging from this study lies in shaping sustainable urban form for China’s decision makers and urban planners.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 3081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeng ◽  
Lu ◽  
Liu ◽  
Zhou ◽  
Hu

With the challenge to reach targets of carbon emission reduction at the regional level, it is necessary to analyze the regional differences and influencing factors on China’s carbon emission efficiency. Based on statistics from 2005 to 2015, carbon emission efficiency and the differences in 30 provinces of China were rated by the Modified Undesirable Epsilon-based measure (EBM) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Model. Additionally, we further analyzed the influencing factors of carbon emission efficiency’s differences in the Tobit model. We found that the overall carbon emission efficiency was relatively low in China. The level of carbon emission efficiency is the highest in the East region, followed by the Central and West regions. As for the influencing factors, industrial structure, external development, and science and technology level had a significant positive relationship with carbon emission efficiency, whereas government intervention and energy intensity demonstrated a negative correlation with carbon emission efficiency. The contributions of this paper include two aspects. First, we used the Modified Undesirable EBM DEA Model, which is more accurate than traditional methods. Secondly, based on the data’s unit root testing and cointegration, the paper verified the influencing factors of carbon emission efficiency by the Tobit model, which avoids the spurious regression. Based on the results, we also provide several policy implications for policymakers to improve carbon emission efficiency in different regions.


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