Development impact of airport capacity expansion with city-airport expressway connection in Asia's emerging economies: Evidence on nighttime light intensity from Ha Noi

Major cities in Asia's emerging economies continue to deliver megaprojects for airport capacity expansion, including city-airport ground transportation connection, to meet growing air travel demand, support dynamic supply chain reconfiguration, and promote wider urban economic development. Nevertheless, there is little evidence about whether and how such megaprojects can transform cities for airport-linked development in Asia's emerging economies. This study examines the development impact of new terminal construction with city-aiport expressway connection projects by analyzing changes in nighttime light intensity (NTL) along the new ground transportation corridor in Ha Noi, Viet Nam. In this microgeographic impact analysis, NTL is assumed to indicate the degree of urban economic activity or development. A spatial-temporal dataset was organized on a 500-m grid-cell scale as the unit of analysis covering a 12-km distance buffer area from the new city-airport ground transportation corridor for 2012–2020. Based on a quasi-experimental design framework, difference-in-differences (DID) estimation techniques were applied to pursue causal inference. The results of the DID model analysis present that the impact of new terminal construction with city-airport expressway connection projects on NTL is significantly positive near the new ground transportation corridor. An additional analysis further reveals that the NTL impact tends to be greater near the city center, significant regardless of residential density, and significant in already well-developed locations. These empirical findings highlight the importance of city-airport expressway connection along with strategic land reform programs and land-use rezoning practices in distributing and amplifying the catalytic effects of airport capacity expansion citywide in Asia's emerging economies.