Analysis of the influencing factors of the formation of main vegetable production areas in China: A case study of Shouguang in Shandong Province
我国蔬菜主产地形成的影响因素——以山东寿光为例

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influencing factors and the mechanism of formation of the main vegetable production areas in China.The vegetable sector has changed from the planned economy to market economy and the vegetable production areas have gone through scatter to concentration in China.Compared with the western countries,the initial study on the change and the concentration of agricultural production areas in China started late,and study methods and perspectives of existing literatures have mainly focused on economics theory at national and provincial levels.However the studies have paid little attention to using the theories of areas concentration and main production areas to study rural households.The paper is based on the data from a survey conducted in August 2009 on 284 vegetable growers from four towns of Shouguang,the main vegetable production areas in China,and employs the framework of the formation of vegetable main production areas and uses the structural equation model to study the influencing factors of the formation of main vegetable production areas. The results show that technology,transportation,market demand and scale,knowledge spillover and government policies have a significant positive effect on the formation of the main vegetable production areas.However,factor endowment has a weak positive effect on the formation.Furthermore,government policies have the greatest impact,followed by market demand,scale,traffic,technology,knowledge spillover and factor endowment.Government policies also have a positive effect on knowledge spillover. The study results can help to understand the formation mechanism of the main vegetable production areas,provide a theoretical basis for the implementation of policies,and promote the development of agricultural regional economic theory.