Spatial Differences And Influencing Factors Of County Basic Public Services Level In Fujian Province

Since the reform and opening up,Fujian' s economy and society have developed rapidly.With the continuous advancement of industrialization and urbanization,and the continuous improvement of people's living standards,the people' s desire to improve their quality of life has become stronger,and they have new expectations for improving the level and quality of public services.In recent years,although the absolute level of basic public services in Fujian is on the rise,due to human history,geographical conditions,economic development and policies,there are large differences in the development of basic public services between different regions,and the polarization of it is still relatively serious.At present,even some scholars have made some researches on the development of basic public services in Fujian Province,most of them are aimed at the whole province or the urban level and lack empirical researches at the county level.As a saying goes “the county is ruled well,the country is running smoothly”,the county level is the intermediate unit between the central and local governments.So that promoting the equalization of basic public services between counties will help improve people's livelihood and maintain social stability and harmony.It is also the realistic basis for building a well-off society in an allround way.In this context,this paper uses 56 counties(cities)of Fujian Province as research units to construct a basic-public-services(BPS)level evaluating index system including basic education services,medical and health services,social security and welfare services.The entropy-TOPSIS method is also adopted to measure the scores of the basic public service level of the county in Fujian in 2015 and discuss the regional differences and spatial patterns of it.Finally,based on the global and local perspectives,the Spatial Lag Model and the Geographically Weighted Regression Model are respectively constructed to study the influencing factors of the spatial differences of county BPS.The results show that:(1)Among the three BPS subsystems,the most prominent regional differences are health care services,followed by basic education services,and the regional differences in social security and welfare services are relatively small;(2)There are obvious regional differences in the BPS level of the county in Fujian Province.As a whole,the coastal areas are higher than the inland areas,eastern Fujian > northern Fujian > northwestern Fujian > western Fujian,showing “high east and low west,south strong and north weak" spatial pattern;(3)The counties' basic public service level of the Fujian province has significant global autocorrelation and local autocorrelation characteristics in the spatial patterns and it shows a phenomenon of “club convergence”;(4)Regional economic strength,general transfer payment,government preference for public services,transportation development level,urbanization level and the level of opening-up have positive effects on promoting county BPS,while special transfer payment and average elevation have negative effects;in addition,the intensity of each of the influencing factors on the basic public service level is spatially heterogeneous,showing a distinct hierarchical structure in space.Based on the above conclusions,the paper puts forward relevant policy recommendations on how to improve the basic public services level of the counties in Fujian and promote the equalization of basic public services between counties.