The reconfiguration effect of China's high-speed railway on intercity connection ——A study based on media attention index

A high-speed railway (HSR) station in a city can make a significant change to the way a city receives and transmits information, thus increasing its “borrowed size.” How does an intercity passenger transport system shape the pattern of urban connection? To provide an answer to this question, a study is conducted to investigate the impact of the HSR project rolled out across China, which is known as the world's largest railway network, on intercity media attention as constructed from the information of local media coverage. A staggered difference-in-differences (DID) regression approach is taken to find out that the opening of a new HSR station increases the media attention drawn by a city from other cities by 1.88%, and that the direct link between two cities through HSR improves intercity attention by approximately 0.90%. To further explore the underlying mechanism, heterogeneity analysis is conducted to indicate that HSR has augmented the intercity connection network by reinforcing the cooperation between various cities, and this power has diminished with distance.