Causal effect of MFOZ

Title: Closer to causality: How effective is spatial planning in governing built-up land expansion in Fujian Province, China?

Research objective: The Major Function Oriented Zone (MFOZ), the first strategic spatial plan in China, is developed to achieve a coordinated regional development, through spatial regulation and zoning of development. The MFOZ he MFOZ divided land into four major function-oriented zones: The development-optimized zone, the development-prioritised zone, the development-restricted zone, and the development-prohibited zone. We used propensity score marching to evaluate the effect of the MFOZ on built-up land expansion in Fujian Province over three time intervals (2013–2015, 2013–2018 and 2013–2020).

Data: Data.xlsx contains the variables of 954 towns in Fujian Province.
Town_ID is the town unique ID;
County_ID is the county unique ID;
City_ID is the city unique ID;
MFOZ is the the development-prioritised zone and the development-restricted zone (The development-optimized zone and the development-prohibited zone are excluded);
Builtup_13_15 is the built-up land expansion from 2013 to 2015;
Builtup_13_18 is the built-up land expansion from 2013 to 2018;
Builtup_13_20 is the built-up land expansion from 2013 to 2020;
Dis2water is the Euclidean distance from the town to the nearest waterbody;
Slope is the the average slope within the town;
GDP is the average GDP in 2010 within the town;
Pop is the average population in 2010 within the town;
Road is the average population in 2010 within the town;
Dis2city is the Euclidean distance from the town to the nearest prefectural city centre;
Nei_Arable, Nei_Forest, and Nei_Built.up are the area of arable land, forest land, and built-up land neighbouring town i in 2010.

Method: we used the propensity score matching to compare the changes in the amount of built-up land in the towns of the development-prioritised zone with the matched towns of the development-restricted zone. Additionally, we used three evaluation intervals (2013–2015, 2013–2018 and 2013–2020) to evaluate temporal variation in the causal effect of the MFOZ on built-up land expansion.