Enabling urban innovation and development with the digital economy is an important manifestation of the new development concept. This study examined the multidimensional influence mechanism of the digital economy on the innovation and development of Chinese cities. Based on a panel data set of 275 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2010 to 2019, the mechanism was analyzed by using spatial econometric models and other methods for revealing the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of the level of urban innovation (LUI). The results of the study show that: 1) During the study period, LUI in Chinese cities showed an uneven development, with a tendency to widen the development differences between regions, and a significant and stable spatial agglomeration distribution characteristic. 2) Nationwide, the development of digital infrastructure (DIF) and digital industry (DID) only helped to raise LUI within the regions, while digital technology (DT) had a stronger permeability and diffusion effect in promoting LUI. 3) The multidimensional development levels of the digital economy all showed a positive effect on the innovation levels of cities in the eastern, central, western, and northeastern regions, but only digital technology passed the test of significance in the models for all four broad regions. In terms of city type heterogeneity, digital technology also showed the strongest influence and technology diffusion effects. This study expanded the research perspective of digital economy-enabled innovation and development, and provides decision-making references for utilizing digital economy to promote urban innovation and development.
The digital economy is a new driving force for the high-quality development of the tourism industry in the new era. In recent years, with the emergence of blockchain, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and other emerging technologies, scientific and technological achievements have been rapidly transformed and put into production. Digital technology has become an important force to promote the restructuring of production factors, the improvement of production efficiency, and the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure. The deep integration of tourism—as a tertiary sector of the economy—and digital technology has become the key factor in promoting the upgrading of tourism industry structure. The digital economy, with its powerful productivity and high knowledge intensive form, reshapes the production mode of the tourism industry, improves its efficiency, and injects new momentum into the high-quality development of the tourism industry. However, there is a lack of theoretical exploration and empirical testing of the relationship between the digital economy and the high-quality development of the tourism industry. On the basis of analyzing the role of the digital economy in the high-quality development of the tourism industry, this study constructed an indicator system to measure the level of digital economy development and high-quality development of the tourism industry in 280 cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2011 to 2019, and used the spatial Durbin model to empirically test the impact of the digital economy on the high-quality development of the tourism industry and its spatial spillover effects. The results show that the digital economy had a direct impact on the high-quality development of the tourism industry, and there was an inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship. This result is still significantly valid after a series of robustness tests. Further analysis indicates that the digital economy had a spatial spillover effect on the high-quality development of tourism in neighboring regions, and a U-shaped nonlinear relationship existed. The results offer a new perspective for analyzing the impact of the digital economy on the high-quality development of the tourism industry, and provide theoretical reference and empirical evidence for leveraging the digital economy to support the high-quality development of the tourism industry.
Statistical data errors not only mislead the analysis, decision making, and actions of the government, business, and individuals, but also cast doubt on the conclusions of numerous academic studies. Among these data, social-economic data related to businesses is an important target of statistical work, and the determination of business locations is a prerequisite for statistical data on businesses. Currently, the registered address serves as the business location in many social-economic data, but the phenomenon of spatial separation between confirmed business entities and registered addresses may result in significant errors when statistics are conducted based on registered addresses. This article argued that the spatial separation between business entity locations and registered addresses is a new perspective for understanding and studying statistical data errors, providing the possibility to measure actual data errors. In addition to the registered address, listed companies also disclose their office address, which serves as a breakthrough point for quantifying the separation between business entities and registered addresses and studying the statistical errors in data. Taking the office address as the geographical location of A-share listed company headquarters and using various types of data based on this location as the correct values, this study compared and analyzed the errors in data collected based on the registered address (including the number of companies, company indicators, regional indicators, and geographical distances). The study showed that when statistics are generated based on the registered address, the 233 A-share listed companies examined in this study are misclassified in terms of their province (that is, the headquarters are located in a province that is different from the registered address), with most of these companies being located in economically developed regions such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong, while the distribution of registered addresses is relatively scattered. Influenced by these companies, the average error rate of the number of companies calculated based on the registered address is 14.23% per province, indicating a more imbalanced distribution of the actual headquarter locations of listed companies compared to the registered addresses. The combined average error rate of the six company indicators is 24.84%, showing significant variation in error rates across different provinces and indicators. The average error rate of calculating eight regional development indicators based on the registered address for companies in different industries is 3.04%, indicating a relatively small error rate. The statistical error in calculating the geographical distance between companies and accounting firms based on the registered address depends on the location relationship between the headquarters, registered addresses, and accounting firms. Many companies hire accounting firms in their headquarter locations, leading to a significantly higher geographical distance calculated based on the registered address compared to the actual value. The issue of statistical data errors caused by the spatial separation between business entities and registered addresses will persist in the long term. Given the significant impact of data errors on government decision making, business strategy formulation, academic research, and so on, it is essential for the academic community, especially those in economic geography, to pay attention to the statistical data errors caused by the separation between business entities and registered addresses and their negative effects.
The Pan-Asian Railway is a new channel for cooperation between China and ASEAN countries in the future, which will profoundly affect the infrastructure connectivity and regional development level of countries along the route, and is of great significance for promoting the further implementation of the Belt and Road initiative. In order to conduct a cross-scale research of transport superiority, this study used the 1 km×1 km grid as the basic spatial unit, and selected the present and the future year as two time points for comparison. Based on the improved transport superiority model, we characterized the transport superiority pattern of the Indo-China Peninsula before and after the opening of the Pan-Asian Railway. We also explored the potential impact of changes of transport superiority on regional development. The main findings of the study are as follows: 1) The Pan-Asian Railway can significantly improve the transport superiority of countries and regions along the route, forming a "屮" shaped spatial pattern, but also exacerbating the uneven distribution of transport superiority. The transport superiority of Singapore, western Malaysia, and Thailand shows a greater increase, and the gap with other countries has further widened. Areas with high transport superiority are scattered in central cities such as Bangkok, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and concentrated along the western coast of the Malay Peninsula. 2) After the opening of the Pan-Asian Railway, the area of medium and above-level transport superiority regions increased from 10.04% to 37.34%, and the population proportion of these areas increased from 46.05% to 73.67%, providing strong support for regional development. 3) The Pan-Asian Railway is beneficial for enhancing the agglomeration capacity of central cities and the radiation attraction of coastal cities to inland areas, weakening the restrictions on the circulation of factors across national boundaries. In addition, the opening of the Pan-Asian Railway can form a transnational coastal and coastal-inland development axis, and support the networked development structure of the Gulf of Thailand region. In the future, regional cooperation between China and ASEAN should focus on the Gulf of Thailand region, open up new international land-sea trade channels, and support regional linkages and international cooperation between western China and countries in the Indo-China Peninsula.
The comprehension of the interdependence between urban rail transit ridership and land use is beneficial for rational resource allocation to facilitate the implementation of transit-oriented development (TOD). Existing studies have primarily focused on ridership and the built environment of stations to identify key influencing factors, while there remains a lack of research from a global perspective regarding the dependence of ridership on land use along urban rail transit lines. To this end, this study used multi-source urban geographic data from 36 major cities in China's mainland in 2019 to establish line function and built environment factors that depict land use, and classify line types using the two as clustering features, while also establishing transportation service factors. XGBoost (eXtreme Gradient Boosting) was employed to analyze the influencing factors of ridership across different types of lines. Taking seven supercities such as Beijing, 14 megacities such as Wuhan, and 15 big cities such as Nanning and their urban rail transit systems as research objects, the results show that urban rail transit lines can be categorized into downtown line type Ⅰ, downtown line type II, and suburb line, based on the different service scopes of the lines and variations in urban development levels. The cumulative contribution of the explanatory variables in the top five, which are of utmost importance to ridership, accounts for at least 60% across all three types of lines. Among these, both employment density and the coverage level of line on the downtown area emerged as significant land use explanatory variables shared by all three types of lines. Moreover, it was observed that important explanatory variables exhibited a threshold effect on ridership, with converging thresholds among important variables within the same type of line but notable difference between different types. Therefore, the construction of TOD corridor should align the distribution of employment and residential areas, as well as supporting resources, in accordance with local conditions. The research findings can help understanding the mechanism of land use affecting urban rail transit ridership and provide a reference for promoting the development of corridor TOD.
The maker movement has facilitated the emergence and development of maker space, which attracts entrepreneurs and has become the key space of urban innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in the e-society. Maker space plays the roles of workplace providers, community hosts, and incubation generators. The more efficiently a maker space plays plural roles, the greater its entrepreneurial and innovative functions. From the perspective of indoor and outdoor environments and taking central Guangzhou City as a case, this study directly evaluated entrepreneur respondents' satisfaction with maker space and environmental factors (that is, facilities and services) that support the roles of workplace providers, community hosts, and incubation generators based on a questionnaire survey and indirectly measured the relative importance of these factors based on the ordered Logit models, respectively. Following the importance-performance analytical framework, the results are further used to propose planning strategies for maker space. In the survey, entrepreneur respondents generally are satisfied with maker space and its indoor/outdoor environments. However, there are differences for different environmental factors. Specifically, satisfactions with indoor and outdoor environmental factors that support the role of workplace providers are higher than those that support the roles of community hosts and incubation generators. Despite the differences in importance, satisfactions with all these facilities and services are important for the overall satisfaction with maker space. Furthermore, the importance-performance analysis suggested that indoor and outdoor environmental factors that support the role of maker space as incubation generators are in the most urgent need of improvement; improvements of indoor and outdoor environmental factors that are related to the role of workplace providers and community hosts should consider entrepreneurs' needs. From the perspective of users, this study provides a reference for indoor and outdoor environment planning for enhancing entrepreneur's satisfaction with maker space and its innovation role in urban economic development.
Promoting rural industrial green transformation is a crucial approach to achieving the rural industrial revitalization and ecological protection. In this study, the spatial and temporal characteristics, obstacle factors, and main problems of the rural industrial green transformation (RIGT) from 2015 to 2020 in Daye City, Hubei Province were explored. The spatial pattern of rural industrial green transformation was examined and optimized. The regulating paths were refined based on the neo-endogenous development theory. The study results indicate that: 1) The overall level of RIGT in Daye City showed an upward trend, with the most significant transformation occurring in 2017 and 2018. However, the endogenous transformation momentum is insufficient, and the exogenous transformation momentum is not sustainable. The level of RIGT varied significantly among townships. The transformation of suburban townships and agricultural-oriented townships was outstanding, while the transformation of mountainous townships and urban sub-districts was generally slow. 2) Industrial transformation was the main dimension limiting the RIGT in the study area. It reflects the problem of insufficient extension of rural industrial chain, low production efficiency, and poor integration of farmers. The obstacles in the green transformation dimension were relatively small. This indicates that the rural areas in the city have achieved a phased transition from end-of-pipe pollution control to green development at the source of industries. 3) Rural industrial green transformation in the study area can be divided into four categories: high level-high speed type, high level-low speed type, low level-high speed type, and low level-low speed type. The corresponding spatial optimization strategies are proposed for each type. 4) From the neo-endogenous development perspective, based on optimizing and regulating the internal factors of people, land, and industry in the rural areas, external factors such as policies, capital, markets, and technology should be integrated and utilized. At the same time, the dynamic interaction and organic integration of internal and external factors should be promoted, in order to stimulate the upper and grassroots-level linkages and internal and external symbiosis of the neo-endogenous industrial green transformation development momentum. This study can enrich the perspective of rural transformation research and provide theoretical guidance and a reference for the practice of rural industrial revitalization and ecological protection.
The choice of residential location is an issue that migrant workers must face in the process of return migration, and its examination is of great significance for the development of urbanization of county areas. Based on the data from a questionnaire survey of 604 returning migrant workers in Tanghe County, Henan Province in 2022, this study used descriptive statistics and binary Logistic regression methods to explore the separation and convergence of the residential location of returning migrant workers' family members and their influencing factors in the process of return migration. The findings are as follows: 1) The family members of nearly 60% of returning migrant workers are still separated, either within the home county or in different counties. On the one hand, those family members separated within the home county frequently move between the urban and rural residential locations of the family, demonstrating a family residential pattern where members of the family are separated in residence but still united as a family unit. Such a residential pattern of family members not only promotes urban and rural integration, but also is a prelude of eventual convergence of urban and rural residential locations of the family. On the other hand, the prospects of family residential locations for those returning migrant families separated between two or more counties (with one being the home county) may be more diversified; they may eventually converge either in the place of origin (their home county) or in the place of destination (a place outside their home county). 2) Among those returning migrant workers' families whose residential locations have converged in one place, half of them live in towns within the home county, realizing the goal of urbanization of their family members and providing stable human capital for further development of urbanization. However, the other half of the families who live in rural areas still adopt the livelihood strategy of part-time farming and part-time working in non-agricultural sectors, which implies that their urbanization process is incomplete and therefore they have great potential to promote the urbanization process of their home counties. 3) Modeling results suggest that the younger the returning migrant workers are, the smaller the number of family members, the higher the monthly family income, and the closer the residential location is to the center of the county, the greater the possibility for the convergence of residential locations of migrant workers' family members. The modeling results further show that the higher the education level of returning migrant workers, the smaller the number of their family members, the larger the size of the family labor force, the higher the monthly household income, the longer the duration of migration and the time since return migration, and the farther the residential location to the center of the county seat, the greater the likelihood for the residential location of returning migrant workers' families to converge in urban areas, and possessing owner-occupied housing promotes the convergence of their residential locations in urban areas. The research results can provide a scientific reference for local governments to formulate policies to guide migrant workers to return and promote in situ urbanization of their home areas.
Tourism industries are driving place transformation for many tourist destinations. Scholars have carried out a large number of empirical studies on the tourism-driven place transformation, but have neglected the construction of the analytical framework for place transformation. Based on the "place" theory in cultural geography, this study identified the dimensions of place transformation and constructed an analytical framework for place transformation. Taking the tourist destination of Fenghuang Ancient Town (FAT) as a case study, this study obtained first-hand data through interviews and non-participatory observation, collected online texts and historical documents, and analyzed the data through text analysis, comparative analysis, and mapping and visualization. This study revealed the place transformation characteristics and mechanisms of FAT before and after its tourism development from 2000 to 2019. The results are as follows: In the analytical framework for place transformation constructed in this study, place transformation can be observed by the transformation of its constitutive dimensions of place, which include location, locale, and sense of place. The static and bounded "location" are transformed to open and networked. With regard to "locale", material environment for meeting the needs of local residents are transformed to meet the needs of multiple population across multi-scale space, while close social relations among residents are transformed into multi-group and multiple types of social relations. The "sense of place" is transformed from stable, rooted, and insiders-owned to pluralistic and owned by both internal and external populations. The case study of FAT preliminarily validated the analytical framework for place transformation. The three dimensions of location, locale, and sense of place of FAT had undergone significant transformation after local tourism development. The FAT was transformed from a "mosaic" into a "relational place". The place transformations of FAT are the results of multi-scale processes in which tourism market, state agencies, and local subjects interact through the mechanisms of commercialization, institutional design, and agency, respectively. This study enriches the theoretical research of place transformation and provides some theoretical guidance for local tourism planning and development.
China's ecological civilization construction is currently in a deepening phase, and there is a pressing need to find effective ways to coordinate the establishment of ecological protection zones with the development of surrounding areas. A crucial aspect is ensuring that village residents can make reasonable use of the ecological environment and historical and cultural resources for "poetic dwelling" and a strong sense of place. The case of Xiaozhou Village in the Haizhu Wetland Park, Guangzhou City serves as an exemplary case and a source of inspiration for other areas. This study used Grounded Theory to examine the impact of ecological protection areas on the sense of place among surrounding village residents. The study revealed that the establishment of the Haizhu Wetland Park has resulted in changes in the village residents' livelihoods, living experience, and social relationships. These changes interact and mutually influence each other, ultimately shaping the residents' sense of place. The findings show that the establishment of the wetland park has improved not only the residents' economic conditions but also their living environment, social interactions, and social relationships, which all contribute to the development of a strong sense of place. The study also indicates that the village residents' sense of place is influenced by their past experiences and the psychological response arising from the spatiotemporal comparison through their interpersonal relationships. The relative sense of gain generated by comparison is more conducive to the development of a positive sense of place, while negative sense of place is associated with the relative sense of loss derived from comparison. The proposed spatiotemporal comparison mechanism provides valuable insights into the formation process of different senses of place among village residents and offers strategies for cultivating and maintaining positive sense of place. By balancing the conservation of the ecological protection area and the development of the surrounding areas, positive sense of place can be sustained and strengthened. This study highlights the significance of ecological protection zones in China and the importance of balancing it with the development of surrounding areas. By examining the relationship between the establishment of the ecological protection zone and the village residents' sense of place, the study offers a unique perspective on how to approach this complex issue. The findings suggest that the promotion of ecological conservation can have far-reaching effects on the social, economic, and cultural aspects of a region. By considering the spatiotemporal comparison psychology and past experiences, a positive sense of place can be cultivated and maintained. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the interplay of ecological conservation and socioeconomic development, offering a useful guide for future planning and policy making.
The research of security with "home" as the center is an important issue in human geography and its related disciplines. There are many theoretical models of safety perception, such as victimization model, vulnerability model, and disorder model. In terms of the influencing factors of residential safety perception, existing studies mainly focus on individual factors and environmental factors, and there are few studies that comprehensively analyze housing situation and different crime victimization experiences. Therefore, based on 1568 questionnaires through a household survey in 74 typical communities in Guangzhou City, this study used factor analysis and multiple linear regressions to analyze the impact of housing situation and crime victimization experience on residential safety perception. The results show that individual attributes, social environment in the community, housing situation, and crime victimization experience have significant influence on residential safety perception. With regard to individual attributes, gender has a significant impact on residential safety perception, and the level of residential safety perception of female residents is significantly lower than that of male residents. Age has a positive influence on residential safety perception, which increases significantly with age. With regard to social environment and housing situation, physical environment disorder and social environment disorder have a negative impact on the level of residential safety perception. Formal social control and house ownership have positive effects on residential safety perception, but informal social control and collective efficacy have no significant effects. Both direct and indirect crime victimization experience have negative effects, but direct victimization experience has a higher impact on residential safety perception than indirect victimization experience. The findings can provide decision-making reference for the official department to take targeted measures to improve the level of residents' safety perception.
Analyzing the relationship and interaction between economic activities and the environment is a necessary way to achieve human-environment harmony. Environmental economic geography (EEG) emerged at the historic moment, mainly studying the impact of environmental factors on economic activities, as well as the feedback, adaptation, and transformation of economic activities to natural conditions. This article first reviewed the evolution of the discipline of EEG, constructed a research framework from the perspective of economic cycle, and found that EEG research revealed a transition from the focus on external development to the internalization of costs. Through a bibliometric analysis of Chinese and international economic-environmental literature from 1996 to 2023, the article summarized key stages in the development of EEG research, including the initial period, the construction period, and the rapid development period. Combining global value chains and material flow theory, the study analyzed the globalization, relational, institutionalization and evolutionary turn of EEG research topics. In the future, EEG research will be helpful to addressing ecological environmental governance, green innovation and industrial transformation, energy, resilience, and sustainability problems.
The utilization of the resources and environment and the impact on the Earth system of modern human activities have been undergoing great changes. The environment and sustainable development of human society are facing severe challenges. The study of human-earth system coupling provides integrated approaches for solving ecological and socioeconomic problems. However, the understanding of the rural human-earth system coupling is insufficient. Therefore, reviewing the progress of research on rural human-earth system coupling is of great significance for promoting the development of human-earth system science and supporting the decision making for coordinated and sustainable development. The results of this study show that rural human-earth system coupling is a comprehensive process of interaction and mutual influence between the rural socioeconomic system and the natural ecosystem, forming a theoretical paradigm of "process-mechanism-pattern-effect-regulation". The research themes mainly include five aspects, namely, the process and pattern of rural natural and social elements coupling, the influence and feedback of climate change on agricultural production, the driving mechanism of urbanization on rural development, the telecoupling effect of globalization and agricultural trade, and the regulation effects of policy intervention and engineering measures. The research methods mainly involve the coupling evaluation models and the coupling mechanism models. Given the insufficient research on the mutual feedback and transmission mechanisms of rural human-earth system coupling at multiple scales and the lack of data models, future studies should focus on detecting the coupling process and pattern of rural human-earth system under structure transformation and scale extension, analyzing the coupling mechanism of rural human-earth system under elements flow and effects cascade, exploring the simulation and decision-making methods of rural human-earth system that are data-driven and characterized by model integration, and finding the coordination pathways of rural human-earth system under the objective of harmony between humans and nature and global sustainable development.
In recent years, trade protectionism, anti-globalization ideology, and the global public health crisis have exacerbated the challenges of globalization. In this process, tourism development has been greatly impacted and undergone major changes, which faces strong needs for reconstruction and transformation and requires us to re-examine the opportunities and challenges. Therefore, based on the macro-meso-micro scale analyses, this study systematically reviewed and summarized the relevant topics of tourism research in recent years from the perspective of glocalization using the bibliographic analysis method. First, with the increasingly frequent global crises in recent years, scholars have focused on the most pressing practical issues, examined the interaction between climate change and global-local tourism development, the interaction between the COVID-19 pandemic and global-local tourism development, and the glocalization strategy of tourism response to the crises. It is also an important research topic to analyze the dialectical relationship between the Belt and Road initiative and tourism, the development of inbound tourism and outbound tourism in countries and regions along the routes, and the paths of international tourism cooperation between countries and regions along the routes. Second, there exist significant differences in the development factors, development processes, development models, and mechanisms of glocalized tourism in different regions. Urban tourism, rural tourism, nature reserve tourism, and heritage site tourism are the main types of regional tourism in the study of tourism research from the perspective of glocalization. Third, attention has been paid to the research of glocalization and tourism at the micro scale of local governments, residents, tourism enterprises, and tourists. Based on the above, we discussed the tourism research direction from the perspective of glocalization: continue to build theoretical systems of tourism research from the perspective of glocalization, broaden and deepen tourism research at different scales and the correlation between scales from the perspective of glocalization, and use the comprehensive and integrated method from qualitative to quantitative to provide a theoretical reference and practical basis for tourism research with the glocalization perspective.
Improving the carbon sequestration and sink capacity of terrestrial ecosystems is one of the most economical and green ways to achieve the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals on schedule. Soil particulate organic carbon (POC) and mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC), as important soil organic carbon fractions, are the key to understanding changes in the carbon cycle in terrestrial ecosystems. Previous studies have shown that climate warming has changed the carbon cycle of terrestrial ecosystems and affected the input of organic carbon from plants and microorganisms at the same time, but there is no unified conclusion on the response of soil organic carbon components to climate warming and their controlling factors. This article systematically introduced the framework of soil particulate and mineral-associated organic matter. The formation, transformation, and stabilization of the two components were described. The article reviewed current research progresses on the response of soil particulate and mineral-associated organic carbon to climate warming and their influencing factors. On this basis, the shortcomings of existing research and future challenges were discussed, and the key scientific issues that need to be solved urgently at present and future research directions were proposed, in order to provide a theoretical reference for the formulation of soil organic carbon management and solutions to climate change.
