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The purpose of this paper is to compare the differential impact of Taiwan High-speed Railway (T-HSR) and Hainan East Ring High-speed Railway (HER-HSR) stations on the surrounding construction land expansion, reveal the underlying institutional reasons, and then provide policy recommendations for coordinating the rational development of land resources and ecological environment protection around high-speed railway (HSR) stations. The research methods include the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, buffer analysis, and GIS spatial analysis. The results show that (1) The spillover impact of HSR stations on the surrounding construction land expansion is the result of the game between different actors around the development and protection of land around HSR stations under the action scenarios of various external factors. The surrounding construction land of 12 stations of T-HSR increased by 269.98 km2 within the study scope and period, while the surrounding area of 10 stations in HER-HSR increased by 187.61 km2. (2) There are nine stations in T-HSR that affect the expansion of surrounding construction land within 1.0–3.0 km and lead to the expansion of construction land of 22.44 km2, while there are six stations in HER-HSR that affect the expansion of construction land within 1.5–3.5 km and lead to the expansion of construction land of 24.20 km2. Other stations cannot effectively identify their areas of influence due to other reasons. (3) Each station of HER-HSR has a stronger influence intensity and degree on the expansion of surrounding construction land than that of T-HSR, which is closely related to institutional factors such as land planning, land property rights, and public participation. In conclusion, the differences in land planning, land property rights, public participation, and other basic systems will lead to differences in the expansion of surrounding construction land for HSR stations. This research aims to provide institutional adjustment suggestions to achieve coordinated economic development and ecological protection around HSR stations in two Chinese islands with different institutional environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification, evaluation, and spatial distribution of "Production–Living–Ecological" space (PLEs) have been widely studied, but there is still little attention paid to whether their distribution characteristics will vary with scale changes. This article takes the organic whole of the PLEs composed of production space, living space, and ecological space on Hainan Island as the research object. Starting from the perspective of spatial heterogeneity, it quantitatively evaluates its spatial functions and explores the regularities of its aggregation and coordination characteristics with changes in scale, revealing the evolution of its distribution pattern with changes in scale. The results show that: (1) The distribution of PLEs in Hainan Island has obvious heterogeneity. The functional values of production and living space are distributed in a pattern of high in the south and north, low in the middle; The ecological space shows a high distribution pattern in the middle and low around it. (2) The PLEs in Hainan Island is significantly affected by scale effects. The degree of aggregation decreases as the scale increases, with the ecological space showing the most obvious downward trend, the living space showing a weaker downward trend and the production space being moderate. (3) The overall level of coupling-coordination of PLEs in Hainan Island is low, which decreases as the scale increases, with 500 m × 500 m being the peak value. The research results of this article indicate that there are scale effects in the functional distribution characteristics of PLEs, which can provide decision support for the national spatial planning at different scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategy of building an international tourism island in Hainan is an important national strategic deployment, with tourism as the core, integrating a series of issues such as industry, tropical agriculture, and urban-rural relations. The implementation of this strategy profoundly affects the evolution of local land use patterns and ecosystems on Hainan Island. This paper utilizes a counterfactual analysis framework and Cellular Automata (CA)-Markov model based on the current land use data of Hainan Island for the three periods of 1999, 2008 and 2017. Accordingly, the spatial and temporal conditions of ecosystem service values (ESV) in 2017, under the assumed scenario of unimplemented international tourism island strategy, were simulated. The net spatial and temporal impacts of the international tourism island construction strategy on the value of ecosystem services on Hainan Island were finally assessed. The results are as follows. First, the total value of ESV in Hainan Island in 1999, 2008 and 2017 were 33.88 billion yuan, 56.045 billion yuan and 50.417 billion yuan respectively showing a trend of first increasing and then decreasing; spatially, the ESV were high in the central region and low in the surrounding areas. Second, in the simulated scenario without the implementation of the international tourism island construction strategy in 2017, the total ESV of Hainan Island was 54.19 billion yuan. Third, the implementation of the international tourism island policy reduced the ESV by 3773 million yuan, and the impact of this policy was high in coastal areas and low inland. There was an obvious divergence between the positive and negative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have attempted to investigate the impact of airports on the ecological environment. This paper compares the effects of airports in China and Germany on the surrounding ecological environment and discusses the underlying institutional mechanisms that lead to these impacts. We used remote-sensing ecological indicators to assess ecological environment quality. A buffer analysis was used to determine the influence scopes of airports on the ecological environment. The institutional analysis development framework was adopted to investigate the functions of different institutions on the influence scopes and intensities. The results showed that the Chinese airport had obvious negative effects and that its impact scope was wide, while the impact intensity of the German airport was weaker. These significant differences stem from the distinct institutional systems that structure the two airports. Our findings ultimately provide insight into how to improve the relationship between infrastructure construction and environmental protection in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]