Three-dimensional intergovernmental competition and urban sprawl: Evidence from Chinese prefectural-level cities

The nature of the state ownership of urban land in China determines that the problem of urban sprawl in China needs to be interpreted from both government and the land market. The local governments in China have absolute control over the urban land market, so the intergovernmental competition is the key to understanding their land transfer behavior. This paper divides the intergovernmental competition under the pressure of promotion tournaments into three dimensions: fiscal competition, investment attraction competition and promotion environment competition, corresponding to the competition between the central government and local governments, the competition between local governments and the competition among officials working in the same place but different periods, and to propose a theoretical framework for the impact of intergovernmental competition on urban sprawl from both direct and indirect perspectives which better suited to the Chinese situation. Then, by using the panel data of China’s 284 prefecture-level cities during 2003–2013, this paper uses nighttime lighting data to measure the urban sprawl indexes and their spatial and temporal distribution characteristic in China. Further this paper uses the spatial econometric model to test the direct effect and spatial spillover effect of intergovernmental competition on urban sprawl, and uses the mediation effect model to test the mediating effect of intergovernmental competition on urban sprawl measured by land transfer behavior. The results show that the greater the size of the city, the lower the degree of sprawl, and urban sprawl does have spillover effects between adjacent cities. Moreover, fiscal competition, investment attraction competition and promotion environment competition all have significant positive direct effects on urban sprawl, and the level of land marketization has a significant negative direct impact on urban sprawl. Only fiscal competition and the level of land marketization have significant positive and negative spatial spillover effects respectively. And the impact of intergovernmental competition on urban sprawl is mediated by the level of land marketization. Among them, the mediating effects of fiscal competition and promotion environment competition are significantly negative, and the mediating effect of investment attraction competition is significantly positive. Therefore, a disharmonious relationship between intergovernmental competition and urban sprawl can be avoided if the policy makers try to arouse the positive mediating effect of land marketization when enacting relevant urban development policies.