Assessment of the integrated benefits of highway infrastructure and analysis of the spatiotemporal variation: Evidence from 29 provinces in China

While China has made great achievements in highway infrastructure construction, there are still problems with the quality of development and layout balance. This paper uses the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and the entropy weight method to measure the integrated benefits of highway infrastructure (IBHIs) in 29 provinces in China from 2015 to 2020. The measurement is carried out by constructing an assessment system for the IBHIs, and the regional differences and dynamic evolutionary trends of China's IBHIs are revealed using methods such as kernel density estimation and Dagum Gini ratio decomposition. The study finds that (1) there is more potential to improve the development level of China's IBHIs. The problem of economic benefits is more prominent, while social and environmental benefits are steady to favorable in terms of their state. (2) The IBHIs in China continue to improve, with the absolute differences within regions widening and producing polarization or multicollinearity. (3) The relative differences in China's IBHIs are narrowing, and the major factor in the uneven development across regions is the intergroup differences. This study explores the current development status, dynamic change characteristics and different causes of IBHIs in China, providing a theoretical basis and empirical support for further optimizing the layout of highway networks and promoting high-quality development in the highway transport sector.