Sleepless governments under the land dilemma: farmland pressure and overtime work of local governments

Farmland pressure is a central issue in farmland protection and food security, yet its administrative cost to local governments, as reflected in the intensity of government overtime work, remains largely unmeasured. Matching daily night-time light data with the spatial coordinates of local government headquarters, this paper investigates the impact of farmland pressure on government overtime intensity across 300 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2012 to 2023. Using traditional and Bartik instrumental variables and Double Machine Learning (DML) estimations, we find that rising farmland pressure significantly intensifies government overtime, robust to a series of checks. The effect is muted in large cities and regions with rich cultural endowments or lower fiscal self-sufficiency. Mechanism tests show that farmland pressure drives bureaucratic overwork through increased public service provision, intensified environmental governance mandates, and expanded land allocation quotas. We conclude with policy implications for appraisal reform, governance tools, and civil servants’ well-being.