Exploring the impact of high speed railways on the redistribution of economic activities from spatio-temporal perspective

M.Phil.In recent years, China was experiencing a boom in High Speed Railway (HSR) construction. With the advantages in travel time and ticket price, HSR not only changed travel pattern of residents, but it also reshaped the spatio-temporal distribution of individual’s economic activities. The thesis chose 13 approved national urban agglomeration containing 187 prefectural level cities as the research area. To detect the spatio-temporal redistribution driven by HSR, this work modified traditional Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) to a spatio-temporal heterogeneous model Geographically Temporal Network Weighted Regression (GTNWR). In this modified model, it also adopted the fixed bandwidth in the traditional model to the flexible bandwidth by taking the network status of the cities into account. Borrowing the current account identity (income) identity from macroeconomics, the local models’ regression coefficients would obtain specific economic meanings which were the major concern of this thesis. After revealing the spatio-temporal pattern of economic activities’ flow, this study discussed the results by taking railway network structure, passenger flow contribution, and economic structure into consideration. Relying on statistical models, the spatio-temporal pattern of economic activities driven by HSR construction could be interpreted. For the results of GTNWR model, referring to the specific meaning from derivation of macroeconomic identity in local regression models, this study found the investment activities’ spatial aggregation pattern from western and north eastern zones through middle to eastern coastal zone was motivated after the construction of HSR, within urban agglomerations, except for some eastern urban agglomerations, most of the other urban agglomerations showed an aggregation pattern from periphery cities to core cities stimulated by HSR construction. For consumption activity, it started with a bifurcation process in the first stage of research period while after the expansion of HSR construction, with improvement in its intensity, an aggregation pattern started to emerge at the end of the research period.To explore the engine underlying the spatio-temporal pattern, this thesis discussed the results in four aspects considering both railway network and socio-economic factors. In railway structure discussion, this thesis found transportation condition gap enlarged by HSR construction speeded up the aggregation pattern in investment but only delivered a limited bifurcation in consumption to those periphery areas. With the spatial gap increase revealed by the three sections of discussion, based on statistical models, this study replicated part of HSR’s impact process finding its impact started with the news shock on investment activities, as the signal of regional conditions’ advantages, HSR’s attraction in investment lasted for a short period and benefited the consumption outflow. However, with more and more cities accessed by HSR, the comparative advantages diminished, the aggregation pattern to the developed area would once more dominate the spatio-temporal interactions.From the impact process of HSR on economic activities revealed by results and discussion parts, this thesis drew the conclusions and provided policy suggestions for local government to utilize the update of transportation infrastructure and benefitted the local economy.近年来，中国高速铁路建设发展迅速，而由于高铁时间和票价的相对优势，高速铁路不仅改变了居民的出行模式，也改变了个人经济活动的时空分布。本论文选择了13个国务院批准的国家级城市群，包含187个地级市作为研究区域，为了研究高速铁路建设带来的经济活动时空再分布，本研究改进了传统的地理加权回归，发展为时空网络加权回归模型。在这一改进模型中，借助宏观经济学中的收入恒等式，局部回归模型中的回归系数有了特殊的经济含义，而这一经济含义也是本论文考虑的重点。通过揭示经济活动流动的时空模式后，本研究发现投资活动在高铁建设后，出现了从西部、东北地区经中部向东南沿海的集聚模式，这一模式在高铁建设后在程度上和空间尺度上都显著加剧。而在城市群内部，除了东部地区城市群，其余地区城市群内部也出现了边缘城市向核心城市集聚的过程。而消费行为则在高铁建成初期出现了分流，但是在研究后半段，城市群内部的集聚模式初现。为了研究时空背后的机制和相关因素，本论文结合铁路网络和经济发展因素讨论了文章结果，本文发现高铁建设的影响在最初体现为区位优势的提高而引起的短期对投资活动的吸引，同时在早期随着消费目的地交通条件的间接提高刺激了消费。但是随着更多城市开通高铁，比较优势逐步减小，而向发达地区集聚的模式进一步成为经济活动流动的主导。Li, Xijing.Thesis M.Phil. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2018.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-112).Abstracts also in Chinese.Title from PDF title page (viewed on …)