Spatial-Temporal Pattern and Influencing Factors of Spatial Separation of Production and Sales in China’s Automobile Industry

Abstract

Based on provincial automobile sales data and related statistical data from 2002 to 2021 and us-ing some methods including ESDA and Dubin model of spatial panel data, this paper analyzes spatiotemporal evolution characteristics for spatial separation of production and sales and influencing factors of automobile industry in China since 2002. The results show that: The scale of China’s automobile market and production has grown rapidly and the growth rate has shown a trend of slowing down and has begun to show negative growth in 2018. More and more cities implement purchase restriction policies, spatial pattern of automobile production is gradually solidified, and some auto-producing provinces are far away from consumer market and other factors are important reasons for the separation of production and sales in the automobile market. The ex-port-oriented market is gradually solidified in space, and imported markets are mainly distributed in the eastern region and show a trend of shifting to the central and western regions. The direct effect of car production on sales is not significant but the indirect effect is significant, which indicates that there is a phenomenon of separation of production and sales in China’s automobile industry. Factors such as GDP, financial added value, road freight volume, and implementation of automobile consumption incentive policies have significantly increased car sales, while factors such as the level of urbanization, car ownership, the policy of restricting purchases and purchases and COVID-19 pandemic have significantly inhibited car sales.