中国城市居民C2C网络消费的空间特征分析——兼论技术扩散与效率假说的适用性

Spatial Pattern of Urban Resident's C2C Online Consumption in China:Feasibility of Innovation Diffusion Hypothesis and Efficiency Hypothesis

以中国286个地级城市C2C(Consumer to Consumer,个人与个人之间的电子商务)网购指数为基础,尝试从宏观尺度分析中国居民网络消费的空间特征,并对技术扩散假说和效率假说在中国的适用性进行验证。结果表明:(1)中国城市居民的网络消费水平表现出明显的由东部沿海向西北内陆逐渐递减的等级式空间分异规律。(2)年轻人口比例、收入水平以及实体商业发展水平对城市居民的网络消费具有显著的促进作用,但城市交通可达性对其具有显著的抑制作用。(3)技术扩散假说和效率假说对中国城市居民网络消费水平的空间特征均有一定的解释力。发达城市居民的网络消费水平更高,这表明技术扩散假说在中国更具解释力。

Consumer’s e-shopping behavior has a pervasive effect on urban physical commerce. To provide a clear insight into understanding of the spatial reconstruction of physical commerce in information era, it becomes a key issue for geographers to investigate the spatial distribution of online consumption. To date, plenty of studies have enriched our understanding by focusing on the key issue, and two hypotheses are proposed. The first is innovation diffusion hypothesis, which states that residents in highly urbanized cities are more likely to adopt e-shopping, because they are always younger, better educated, more affluent, and better internet skills. The second is efficiency hypothesis, which agrees that residents in low urbanized cities are more likely to adopt e-shopping, because they always face a spatial constraint of lower accessibility to stores. However, two hypotheses seem to be opposing to each other, and it is unknown that which hypothesis is reasonable in China. Taking Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) e-commerce of Chinese prefecture-level cities as research objects, this paper attempts to explore the relationship between urbanization level and resident's online consumption likelihood. The result indicates that: 1) The spatial distribution of resident's online consumption follows a hierarchy of decreasing from the east coast areas to the inland areas in China. In particular, two outstanding cores with more consumption share have emerged in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta respectively. And several secondary cores have emerged in Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi’an, and so forth. Furthermore, based on Hot Spot Analysis in GIS, a significant agglomeration area is identified in the southeast of China, which represents that there are many cities with high index of online consumption clustering. A significant agglomeration area is also identified in the northwest of China, which represents that there are many cities with low index of online consumption clustering. 2) The proportion of young people, the level of income and the development level of conventional commerce have a promotion effect on resident's online consumption. However, the accessibility level of urban public transportation has an inhibition effect on resident's online consumption. 3) The part concepts of innovation diffusion hypothesis and efficiency hypothesis are reasonable for explaining the spatial pattern of resident's online consumption in China. However, innovation diffusion hypothesis is more reasonable, since the residents who live in highly urbanized cities contribute more online consumption share in China. Given that C2C e-commerce has a substitution effect on urban conventional commerce, east coast cities will suffer more from the reconstruction effect of e-commerce. Thus, the development gap of urban conventional commerce between east coast areas and inland areas, to some extent, will be narrowed in a long run.