Land use allocation in Zhangjiakou City under a spatial autocorrelation perspective

Previous research has examined the general driving factors for land use allocation or land use changes. However, some areas are under active interaction with other neighboring areas—without considering spatial autocorrelation, the mechanism for land use changes can hardly be properly revealed. Zhangjiakou, Hebei, China is one typical example to include the spatial autocorrelation when we discuss the land use change models, since counties in Zhangjiakou are acting together in the Three North Shelterbelt Development Program, which is implemented in northern part of China since 1980s. With the land use data in 1985 and 2000, as well as the data from Hebei Statistical Yearbook, this paper tries to reveal how governmental interactions, along with other commonly recognized driving factors, have their influence on land use changes, especially forestry increase in Zhangjiakou. The Three North Project was initiated in 1978, aiming to improve forestry coverage in northern part of China. Zhangjiakou city is included in this national project as well thus local governments in Zhangjiakou are involved in the forestation work under the instruction and requirements of the provincial and central governments. Based on the assumption that county-level governments are aiming at maximizing their revenue when they choose among land uses, this paper provides a theoretical model for county-level governments’ decisions in the forestation process. This paper is a systematic combination of a theoretical framework and empirical study, and I use the theoretical model to motivate the empirical specification to test my hypothesis that county-level governments actually interact with each other in the process or forestation. This paper analyzes the land parcels that are within the 4-mile buffer area along the county borders. The data reveals that the spatial autocorrelation within counties differ from the spatial autocorrelation across counties, which means that across the county borders, the reasons for spatial autocorrelation are not only geographic and economic factors, and the interaction between the counties may lead to the inter-county spatial autocorrelation as well. Also, the way that the county-level governments choose land use types for each land parcel with different geographic and economic characters also reveals that the county-level governments are interacting with each other and working to maximize their own revenues in the forestation process.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural & Applied Econ

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Dong, Yue

Contributors dc:contributor

• McNamara, Paul E.

• Land use changes
• forestation
• China
• the Three North Project
• governmental interaction

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2014 Yue Dong

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50521

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/50521