The Unintended Consequences of Urban Community Infrastructure Investment for Consumption in China

Congliang Wu and Ning Zhang
Additional contact information
Congliang Wu: School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing 100010, China
Ning Zhang: School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing 100010, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-11

Abstract: Background: At a critical stage of the shift of economic growth, this work studied urban community infrastructure’s driving role in consumption, discusses the causes and action mechanisms of infrastructure in promoting residents’ consumption. Methods: Based on micro-household survey data, applying probit regression. Result: We found that community infrastructure, divided according to either its engineering or its service nature, has a great positive externality, significantly increasing the proportion of residents’ consumption, and that the driving force behind consumption in urban central areas, transportation, and environmental protection infrastructure is more obvious. Good urban community infrastructure facilitates residents’ production and promotes the efficient circulation of information, resources, and factors; improves residents’ subjective expectations; and brings more consumption opportunities so that community infrastructure significantly improves residents’ probability of consumption. Conclusion: In the context of economic transformation to a high-quality economy, we should pay attention to the key role of community infrastructure investment in structural transformation and choose urban central areas, capital-intensive industries, and transportation and environmental protection infrastructure as the investment focus so as to improve the consumption returns brought by infrastructure and achieve the transformation of the economy from an investment-driven one to an innovation-driven one.

Keywords: urban infrastructure; consumption; economic growth drivers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/6/3661/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/6/3661/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:6:p:3661-:d:775719

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().