Effects of economic growth target on the local government industrial land allocation: an empirical study from China

Economic growth targets (EGTs) play an important role in shaping local government behavior in China, yet their implications for industrial land allocation remain insufficiently understood. Based on panel data from 275 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2022, this study empirically examines the impact of EGTs on local governments’ industrial land allocation. The results show that EGTs significantly expand the scale of industrial land grants while simultaneously suppressing industrial land prices and reducing the degree of land marketization. Moreover, the effects exhibit significant heterogeneity across regions, development periods, levels of industrialization, and stages of economic development. Mechanism analyses further reveal that EGTs generate notable top-down amplification effects, constraint effects, and spatial spillover effects. Specifically, top-down amplification strengthens the influence of EGTs on industrial land allocation, while hard constraints exert a stronger negative impact on land prices and a more pronounced positive effect on land supply compared with soft constraints. In addition, EGTs not only affect industrial land allocation within a city but also produce significant spatial spillover effects on neighboring regions in the same direction. These findings provide empirical evidence for understanding the behavioral logic of local governments and offer policy implications for promoting high-quality regional economic development.