Resources Science ›› 2019, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (10): 1871-1885.

### Spatial spillover effects of export-oriented economic development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

CAI Bingbing,ZHAO Wei(),LI Zhengyang,YANG Hui

1. College of Environment and Planning, Henan University, KaiFeng 475004, China
• Received:2019-01-10 Revised:2019-04-27 Online:2019-10-25 Published:2019-10-25
• Contact: ZHAO Wei E-mail:zhwei1971@126.com

Abstract:

The Yangtze River Economic Belt has an important strategic position in the regional development in China, starting from the partition and macro level. Studying the spatial spillover effects of the export-oriented economic development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt is conducive to enhancing the export-oriented economic development level among the upstream, middle and downstream reach area, and also provides references for the new pattern of opening-up at the early stage in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Based on the weight matrices of neighborhood relation, geographical distance, and economic gravity, and by constructing spatial econometric models for the regional and the sub-regional levels, this study estimated the spatial spillover effects of export-oriented economic development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2005 to 2017. The results show that: (1) The spatial agglomeration characteristics of export-oriented economic development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt is increasingly clear with the weight matrices of neighborhood relation, geographical distance, and economic gravity. However, the level of export-oriented economic development of each municipality tends to be influenced by the adjacent municipalities. (2) At the regional level, the export-oriented economic development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt presents a significant positive spatial spillover effect. The proportion of the tertiary industry is the vital factor in promoting the level of export-oriented economic development in the Yangtze River Economic belt. (3) At the sub-regional level, there remain obvious differences among the upper, middle, and lower reach areas in the influencing factors of export-oriented economic development. Regional economic policy presents most significant effect in the upper-reach area. In the middle-reach area, developing the tertiary industry can promote the development level of export-oriented economy significantly. Traffic connectivity index has the most significant positive impacts in the lower-reach area. Based on these results, some suggestions for promoting export-oriented economic development level in the Yangtze River Economic Belt are put forward.