Spatial Effects of Place-Based Policies on Urban and Rural Sustainable Development: Evidence from National Modern Agricultural Industrial Parks in China

Urban–rural sustainable development depends on cross-regional linkages, but concentrating resources through place-based policies may generate wider benefits or intensify competition for production factors. Using panel data from 279 Chinese cities over 2006–2024, this study constructs a composite index covering economic, social, and ecological dimensions and combines staggered difference-in-differences, a spatial Durbin model, distance band count exposure regression, and spatial mediation analysis to examine the effects of China’s National Modern Agricultural Industrial Parks policy on urban–rural sustainable development. The baseline results show that policy implementation is positively associated with the composite index in pilot cities. Spatial decomposition yields positive and statistically significant direct and indirect components under the model specification, indicating that policy effects extend beyond implementing cities through spatial spillovers. The distance band count exposure regression reveals a negative association with policy exposure within 0–75 km and a positive association within 75–150 km, with a statistically significant difference between the coefficients. Under alternative distance band specifications, the coefficients for the nearest bands are statistically insignificant. Positive associations reappear at greater distances, and the results across the three specifications suggest that positive spillovers tend to emerge at approximately 100 km. Spatial mediation analysis shows that agricultural value creation and agro-processing both exhibit positive model-implied local transmission effects, with more pronounced cross-city transmission through agro-processing. These findings extend the sustainability assessment of agricultural industrial parks by incorporating a cross-regional perspective, providing empirical evidence for understanding the regional benefits of place-based industrial support and their spatial variation.