摘要：中国自然保护区政策为理解“保护与发展”的关系提供了机会。本文将自然保护区政策视为准自然实验，以2184个县（区）为研究对象，通过整合2013—2022年县域统计数据、卫星遥感数据以及CFPS调查数据，实证分析自然保护区政策是否缩小以及如何缩小县域内部发展差距。研究发现，自然保护区政策能显著缩小县域内部发展差距，设立自然保护区县的内部发展差距约下降0.21个标准差，且在排除实验非随机性和进行系列稳健性检验后依然成立。异质性分析发现，缩小差距效应会受自然保护区等级类型、与邻近城市距离、属地行政等级等因素影响。进一步分析发现，自然保护区主要通过促进县域内环境质量溢出、推动农民合作社创业和本地非农就业、加速乡村旅游专业化发展缩小发展差距。本文从自然保护区政策效应角度，为深入理解“在保护中发展”的生态文明理念提供了经验证据。
关键词：自然保护区；生态文明；县域发展差距；乡村振兴；本地非农就业
How Do Nature Reserves Narrow the Development Gap
within Counties?
Yang Mengyu, Chen Wei, Zhang Xiaoze
Abstract: China’s nature reserve policy offers a valuable opportunity to examine the relationship between conservation and development. This study treats the nature reserve policy as a quasi-natural experiment, utilizing data from 2,184 counties (districts) as research subjects. By integrating county-level statistical data, satellite remote sensing data, and CFPS survey data from 2013 to 2022, the research empirically analyzes whether and how the nature reserve policy reduces intra-county development disparities. The findings reveal that the nature reserve policy significantly narrows intra-county development gaps, with counties establishing nature reserve experiencing a reduction in development disparity by approximately 0.21 standard deviations. These results remain robust after addressing non-randomness in the experiment and conducting a series of robustness checks. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the disparity-reducing effect is influenced by factors such as the classification level of nature reserves, proximity to neighboring cities, and administrative hierarchy. Further analysis demonstrates that nature reserves primarily reduce development disparities through promoting environmental quality spillovers within counties, fostering farmer cooperative entrepreneurship and local non-agricultural employment, and accelerating the specialization of rural tourism development. This study provides empirical evidence from the perspective of nature reserve policy effects, contributing to a deeper understanding of the ecological civilization concept of developing through conservation.
Keywords: Nature Reserve; Ecological Civilization; Regional Development Disparities; Rural Revitalization; Local Non-farm Employment
