Does Quality Regional Growth Reduce Land Resources Dependency? A Spatial Analysis of 290 Cities in China

There is a great urgency worldwide to reduce resource consumption and subsequent environment concern while continuing to support the developing human society. As a sustainable pathway of human activities, quality growth provides a potential solution to reduce land resources dependency and overcome growth externalities associated with land exploitation. To test this hypothesis, this paper investigates the spatial impacts of quality growth on local land use intensity. We contribute to the existing literature by developing a holistic framework with multidimensional patterns to estimate the quality growth, and by using spatial spillover and heterogeneity effects to address the robust relationship between quality growth and land resources utilization across 290 Chinese cities. The results indicate that non-economic factors become increasingly important determinants; quality growth tends to be more spatially polarized. Quality growth exerts a spatially varying but explicit negative effect on land use intensity. However, spatial spillover effects exist more in land resources utilization; cities with greater land use intensity were more likely to be affected by neighboring cities. Our study suggests the policies that benefit regional sustainability, minimize regional imbalance, and promote the stewardship of land resources.