Corresponding Author: Li Ning (ningli@ires.cn)
Chinese Journal of
Population, Resources and Environment 2007 Vol. 5 No.1 63
ARTICLES
The Path Analysis and Its Application Study on Cultivated
Land Change in Hubei Province
Li Chunhua, Li Ning, Shi Peijun
Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management of Ministry of Civil Affairs and Ministry of Education, College of
Resource Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Abstract: On the basis of introducing the principle of path analy-
sis, this paper positively analyzes the influence factors of culti-
vated land change from 1978 to 2002 in Hubei Province. The
relationship between the influence factors and cultivated land
change is studied by means of the path analysis. The results show
that the construction rearrangement of agriculture, grain security
and market mechanism are the main factors that decide the culti-
vated land change. Meanwhile, the impact of investment, urbani-
zation and benefit gap among the different utilizing ways also
leads to the change of cultivated land. The result means that
though some factors have less direct influence on the change of
cultivated land, their indirect influence is significant or vice versa.
Key words: cultivated land change, correlation analysis, path
analysis
Located in Central China and the middle reaches of
Yangtze River, Hubei Province is distributed in a transi-
tional belt where physical conditions and landscapes are on
the transition from north to south and from east to west. It
is one of the regions that possess most energetic and the
greatest potential socio-economic development in Central
China nowadays and even in future. Well known as “a land
of rice and fish”, this region enjoys some of the favorable
physical conditions, with a diversity of natural resources
and the suitability for growing various crops.
Cultivated land, also called farmland, refers to land un-
der temporary and permanent crops. In Hubei Province,
cultivated land can generally be classified into paddy field
and upland field. As for land use, cultivated land may in-
crease in the initial stage of economic development, but
invariably decrease as the expansion of urbanization, in-
dustrialization and road construction, and the increase in
population and nonstaple food production demand. In other
words, the change (i.e., decline) of cultivated land is
closely related to the overall pattern of economic develop-
ment and is thus a good indicator for testing our assump-
tion. The cultivated lands are critical to the food security of
China. They contribute to human welfare, both in biologi-
cal and social security. The path analysis was used in our
study to probe the driving forces of cultivated land change
in Hubei Province, for it provides an aid for determining
the relationship between the cultivated land change in
Hubei Province and its influence factors. Meanwhile, we
used the path analysis method to distinguish the direct and
indirect factors.
1 Principle and model of multi-path analysis theory
Multi-path analysis theory (Ming, 1990; Xie, 1996) is a
combination analysis of regression equation, which is in
light of path coefficient (standardized regression coeffi-
cient). When dependent variable Y is affected by inde-
pendent variable
12
, ,
n
xx" , there is such a linear func-
tion between X and Y:
01122 nn
yxx x
ββ β β
=+ + ++" (1)
The path coefficient is solved through formula (1). The
path coefficient is the partial regression coefficient of the
standard variables, indicating the explanation capability of
the reason accounting for the result. It can be calculated as
follows:
i
i
x
yx i
y
ββ
= (2)
Where
β
i
is the partial regression coefficient y on
.,
i
ix y
x
σ
are the standard deviation of x
i
, y. The deciding
coefficient is the square of the path coefficient. It indicates
the relatively deciding level towards the results. It can be
calculated by the following formula:
2(,1,2,,,)
xx i j i j
ij
yyxyxxx
d ppr ij nij
=<" (3)
Where
xx
ij
y
d indicates the deciding coefficient of two
correlating reasons on
y . If the error term is included, the
deciding coefficient of the error term on y is:
1
1
exxx
iij
nn
yyy
iij
ddd
=<
⎛⎞
⎜⎟
=− +
⎜⎟
⎝⎠
∑∑
(4)