%0 Journal Article %A Dehao Shi %A Tao Yu %A Lei Wang %T The Impact of High-speed Railway on the Industrial Structure of County-level Units: Taking the Yangtze River Delta as an Example %D 2022 %R 10.13249/j.cnki.sgs.2022.11.006 %J SCIENTIA GEOGRAPHICA SINICA %P 1912-1922 %V 42 %N 11 %X

Along with the rapid construction and extent of the high-speed railway network, almost all prefecture-level cities have enjoyed high-speed railway services, especially in the southeast coastal region. Therefore, the main body of high-speed railway construction has been transferred from connecting prefecture-level units to county-level units. However, current studies have rarely paid attention to the impact of the high-speed railway on county-level units. The purpose of this article is to explore what changes will take place in the industrial structure of county-level units after the opening of the high-speed railway and its mechanism. Taking the Yangtze River Delta as an example, it was evident that the sequence of high-speed rail opening and the evolution process of industrial structure in this region have significant synchronization. With the usage of socio-economic panel data of all county-level units in this region from 2000 to 2017, this article measured the impact of high-speed railways on the industrial structure through the time-varying difference-in-differences model and employed sub-grouping, threshold effect and mediation model to explore the mechanism of high-speed rail effect. The results of the study are listed as follows: 1) The opening of the high-speed railway will promote upgrading the industrial structure of county-level units, which is composed of the dispersion of the secondary industry and the aggregation of the tertiary industry. 2) Population size has partial mediating effect on the high-speed rail effect, but there is no threshold mutation within the population size range of the counties and county-level cities in the Yangtze River Delta. 3) The secondary and tertiary industries have different time-laggings in the effect of the opening of the high-speed railway, resulting in two window periods for the transformation of the county-level unit industrial structure. When the county-level units apply for the high-speed railway project, it is necessary to judge their industrial characteristics prudently. And they should follow the law of industrial evolution after opening the high-speed rail and formulate targeted policies to encourage or hedge.

%U http://geoscien.neigae.ac.cn/EN/10.13249/j.cnki.sgs.2022.11.006