How Is Regional Connectivity Associated with County-Level Population Shrinkage? A Multidimensional Spatial Network Analysis of the Chengdu–Chongqing Economic Circle

The integrated development of urban agglomerations strengthens regional connectivity and supports balanced regional development. However, population shrinkage persists in some counties of the Chengdu–Chongqing Economic Circle despite increasingly close regional linkages. From the perspective of regional network embeddedness, this study examines the relationship between different types of regional linkages and the heterogeneous patterns of county-level population shrinkage. Taking 142 counties and districts in the CCEC as the research units, and drawing on multi-source panel data from 2002 to 2022, this study constructs four types of regional linkages: transportation linkages, corporate organizational linkages, executive interlock linkages, and ownership-based corporate investment linkages. Fixed-effects panel models and ordered logistic regression models are then employed to examine the associations of different network linkages with county-level population change and the degree of population shrinkage. By comparing these four network layers within the same county-level framework, the study distinguishes the roles of accessibility, corporate organization, executive relations, and ownership ties. Network evolution was uneven. The dual-core pattern weakened in the transportation and executive interlock networks, while corporate investment became more centralized. These changes describe network topology, whereas population growth remained concentrated in Chengdu, Chongqing, and adjoining districts. Between 2002 and 2022, 89 of the 142 counties in the CCEC experienced population shrinkage, accounting for 62.7% of the sample. These shrinking counties gradually clustered in peripheral areas, including northeastern Sichuan, southern Sichuan, and northeastern Chongqing, resulting in the coexistence of core growth and peripheral shrinkage. Moran’s I increased from 0.0015 in 2002–2007 to 0.1659 in 2017–2022, indicating increasing spatial clustering. The full-sample panel analysis indicates that higher centrality in the transportation, corporate organizational, and corporate investment networks is significantly associated with higher county-level population change rates, indicating either stronger growth or a smaller decline, whereas executive interlock linkages are negatively associated with population change. Further analysis of shrinking counties shows that higher corporate organizational and corporate investment centrality is significantly associated with lower shrinkage severity. By contrast, transportation and executive interlock centrality are not significantly associated with shrinkage severity. Therefore, the positive full-sample association for transportation centrality should not be interpreted as evidence that transportation network expansion generally compensates for metropolitan concentration. These findings suggest that county-level population shrinkage does not simply result from a lack of regional connections, but is closely related to the specific types of networks in which counties are embedded. Corporate organizational and corporate investment networks exhibit more stable statistical associations across both model settings, indicating that increased regional connectivity does not necessarily lead to balanced county-level development.