Understanding spatial spillover effects of airports on economic development: New evidence from China's hub airports. (January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chen, Xin; Xuan, Chao; Qiu, Rui
• Is Part Of: Transportation research. Volume 143(2021)
• Page Start: 48
• Page End: 60
• Publication Date: 2021-01
• Subjects: Hub airports -- Economic development -- Spatial econometric models -- Spillover effects -- Direct effects; Transportation -- Research -- Periodicals; 388.011
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2020.11.013
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0965-8564

Abstract

Highlights: New evidence is provided that airports can produce positive and significant impacts on the urban economy. Spillover effects are much larger than the direct effects from the perspective of the airport network, which are neglected in non-spatial models. Air passenger is the most significant key determinant in terms of facilitating urban economic development in China by contrast to the other measures of airport activities. Other things being equal, increasing flight frequency of existing air services has a larger impact on GDP as opposed to expanding air services to new destinations. Abstract: Many studies have been conducted to examine the direct effects of airports on local economic development, however, there is little solid evidence on spatial spillover effects and much less in the context of China's airport system. To fill this gap, this paper analyses the spatial spillover effects of China's main hub airports on economic development. Our results indicate that air passenger traffic, air cargo shipment, and flight frequency can induce more positive and larger spillover effects to all other neighboring cities connected through airport network contrast to the direct effects. With other things being equal, increasing flight frequency of existing air services has a greater impact on GDP compared with expanding air services to new destinations. This paper contributes to the literature by presenting new evidence on the spatial spillover effects of airports on economic development in Chinese cities.