Spatial Impact of Government Venture Capital on Urbanization and Its Path—Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration in China

Abstract

Despite being the world’s largest developing country and experiencing rapid economic growth, China’s urbanization process lags behind the global standard. The comprehensive promotion of urbanization development is a critical issue for the Chinese government, with government venture capital playing a significant role in promoting regional economic development. Using urbanization dimension levels extracted through factor analysis, this study analyzes the impact of government venture capital on the urbanization development of the Yangtze River Delta region of China and explores its path to determine its spatial spillover effect on surrounding areas. The results show that government venture capital funds can significantly promote urbanization development in this region, primarily by influencing the residents’ standard of living and urban construction levels. In addition, the spatial spillover effect of urbanization can be realized through the promotion of the urban construction level and the ecological health level of surrounding areas. While previous literature has examined government venture capital from multiple perspectives and dimensions, few scholars have investigated the impact of government venture capital on the critical issue of urbanization development. This study fills that research gap and serves as a reference for the Chinese government to promote high−quality urbanization development.

Evaluation and Impact Mechanism of High-Quality Development in China’s Coastal Provinces

“…Research on the factors influencing high-quality development is extensive, and scholars have explored the impact on regional high-quality development based on different perspectives under a single factor, under the interaction of multiple factors or under the mediating role, in order to provide countermeasure suggestions for promoting regional high-quality development from a specific area. Many scholars have found that human capital [26,27], globalization [28,29], environmental regulation [30,31], foreign investment [32][33][34], information and communication technologies [35][36][37], innovation [38,39], and finance [40][41][42] are factors that have an impact on the quality development of countries, provinces, regions and cities. In addition, some scholars have explored the impact of the interaction of multiple factors on high-quality development [43,44].…”