Cultivated Land Conservation and Urban-Rural Living Consumption: A Macro-Dynamic Econometric Analysis
耕地保护与城乡消费的宏观动态计量分析

With the advancement of the reform and opening-up, the living consumption ability of both urban and rural inhabitant increases continuously, posing formidable challenges to land resources utilization in China. With the method of modern macro-dynamic econometrics analysis, this paper analyzes the influence of urban and rural living consumption on cultivated land conservation in the period from 1978 to 2007 in China. The empirical research can be summarized as below. First, urban and rural living consumption is an important influential factor in the quantity change of cultivated land. There is a long term equilibrium between cultivated land quantity and urban-rural living consumption, and the short term fluctuation is minor, with an adjusting range of 7.30% towards long term balance. Second, urban living consumption is a major reason for the cultivated land quantity change, while rural consumption imposes a minor impact. Furthermore, the impacts of urban and rural living consumption on cultivated land quantity changing directions are opposite, and the influence of urban living consumption is longer than that of rural living consumption. Also, the construal level of the impact of urban living consumption on cultivated land quantity change is approximately 23%, while that of rural living consumption is only 4%. However, the construal level of the fluctuation of cultivated land quantity change itself is as remarkable as over 70%. It is therefore concluded that the increase of urban and rural living consumption does not necessarily result in the decrease of cultivated land. In some cases, it would be good to perform cultivated land conservation when the consumption can provoke the consideration of urban and rural inhabitants. Therefore, the influence of urban-rural living consumption on cultivated land conservation depends on many factors such as social, economic and the like. At present, urban-rural living consumption is increasing quickly, and how to protect cultivated land effectively is a challenging question. This research analyzes and clarifies the dynamic relationship between cultivated land conservation and urban-rural living consumption, in order to help decision-makers take reasonable measures in the process of cultivated land conservation.