How Semi-Urbanisation Drives Expansion of Rural Construction Land in China: A Rural-Urban Interaction Perspective

The expansion of rural construction land in China has led to ecological consequences under the context of rural depopulation, despite government land use controls. While previous studies have investigated the local factors contributing to the expansion of rural construction land, the semi-urbanisation of urban immigrants distant from rural areas has received less attention. To better understand the connections between the semi-urbanisation in the urban areas and the construction land expansion in rural areas, this study constructed a network/spatial lag of N/X (N/SLX) model that incorporated the network lagged term of the socio-economic traits of semi-urbanised migrants to analyse how urban semi-urbanisation influenced rural construction land. Our findings suggest that both the income of rural-urban migrants and the difficulty of obtaining urban household registration are positively correlated with the expanding extent of rural construction land. Conversely, the living expenses of migrants and city economic development are negatively correlated with that of rural construction land. Considering our findings, we propose that policies facilitating the settlement and integration of rural out-migrants into cities and proceeding urbanisation based on county towns are crucial to curb the inefficient expansion of rural construction land.