A Research On Deficit-Caused Factors Of China’s Small And Medium-Sized Airports

As the nerve endings and basic node of air transport system, small andmedium-sized airports play an important role in the development of China’s politics,economy, culture and military. However, in China, most of these small andmedium-sized airports don’t benefit from the operation. In stead, they are confrontedwith severe challenges on the survival and development. Therefore, making Chinesesmall and medium-sized airports as the main body of research, this paper attempts tostudy the relationship between these airports’ loss situation and their influence factorsthrough empirical research. Our research will help to present guidance to thedevelopment of the small and medium-sized airports in China.In this paper, standardized procedures and empirical research were utilized toqualitatively and quantitatively analyze the problem. Using the Principle ofEconomics and the Efficiency Theory, the deficit-caused factors were theoreticallyanalyzed from the concept and the history of the small and medium-sized airports.Also, the operation situation of these airports was studied in detail from theperspective of the Statistics and Financial Analysis to present a solid foundation of theempirical study. Besides, in response to the incomplete classification of airports, theairports are sorted into commercial airports and subsidized airports by ClusteringMethod. In the process of studying the relationship between the deficit of small andmedium-sized airports and its influence factors, the opposite number of return onassets was defined as the dependent variable, while the local economic development,the ratio of non-air transportation profits, the charge from passengers, operation cost,size of the airport and the capital composition were selected as independentparameters. Descriptive Statistics, Multiple Colinearity Diagnosis and Multiple LinearRegression were used to carry out empirical verification. According to the analysis,compared with other factors, the operation cost, size of the airport and the capitalcomposition have a greater influence on the deficit of the commercial airports. While,for the subsidized airports, local economic development, size of the airport and thecapital composition play a greater role. Based on these results, in order to get the small and medium-sized airports out of deficit, the government should present moresupport to the airports, which are keener on public welfare. More importantly, theseairports should improve their operation efficiency.In this paper, the reasons for the deficit of small and medium-sized airportswere creatively addressed from the point of Principal of Economics. To reveal thedifferent economic attribute and operation efficiency, the airports are sorted intocommercial airports and subsidized airports using clustering method. Besides,financial management was employed to deeply investigated reasons for deficit, whichwas rarely performed in China. Moreover, empirical research was carried out to studythe deficit of small and medium-sized airports, and the relevant advices werepresented to solve this problem.