How does urban innovation affect construction land use change in China? An analysis based on the network linkage perspective

Innovation is an intrinsic driver of high-quality urban development, and construction land expansion (CLE) is an important challenge that cities must address to achieve sustainable development; however, the existing literature mainly examines urban innovation and CLE from a static perspective. The extant research lacks an in-depth analysis of the relationship and impact between urban innovation network linkage intensity (UINLI) and CLE from the perspective of intercity interaction. This study establishes a new mechanistic framework for the impact of UINLI on CLE from the network linkage perspective based on panel data of 10 national-level urban agglomerations in China from 2007 to 2019. Using a modified gravity model and a spatial econometric model, we empirically estimate the impact of UINLI on CLE for different regions and structures. The results show that (1) UINLI in each urban agglomeration is increasing, gradually forming a “multinode, multiaxis, gradient” network connection characteristics. (2) UINLI has a significant inhibitory effect on CLE; the largest inhibiting effect is on the residential land, followed by the commercial land, and less on the industrial land. (3) The inhibiting effect of UINLI on CLE in the eastern, central, and western urban agglomerations gradually increases from east to west. (4) The negative effect of UINLI on CLE in network-style, group-style, and point-axis-style urban agglomerations decreases with the increasing tightness of the innovation network structure.