Attracted by the urban–rural income gap (URIG), a massive agricultural transfer population has flooded into cities and became a peri-urbanized population due to the restrictions of the household registration system. This trend eventually leads to the rising population peri-urbanization rate (PPUR), which is equal to the proportion of urban resident population with rural household registration in the total residents, and seriously affects the development of new-type people-oriented urbanization. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of URIG on PPUR at the national and regional levels using the spatial exploration analysis and spatial Durbin model from the perspective of comparative economic interests. Empirical results revealed that PPUR had high spatial agglomeration, as indicated by high values in Eastern China and low values in Central and Western China. Moreover, the PPUR of most provinces in China was rising, dominated by intermediate values. At the national level, URIG promoted the increase of PPUR in the province, but inhibited the increase of PPUR in nearby provinces. Except for household registration, other control variables, such as industrial structure, fixed asset formation rate, infrastructure, medical resources and land-centered urbanization, also contributed to the PPUR in the province. At the regional level, the URIG of Central and Western China contributed to the increase of PPUR, whereas in Eastern China it inhibited the increase of PPUR. The strong correlation of URIG and PPUR calls for relevant policies for narrowing URIG and reducing PPUR.

The accelerated urbanization process in China has caused a shift in the urban land use structure. The Chinese government has issued ‘the National New-type Urbanization Plan’ focusing on the rational use of resources, which is of great significance for the intensification and sustainability of land use. In promoting the construction of the new-type urbanization (N-TU), enhancing the urban land use efficiency (ULUE) is crucial to regional coordinated development. This study uses panel data from 2011 to 2020 for 11 provinces (cities) in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) and adopts the super efficiency (SE) slacks-based measure (SBM) model with undesirable outputs and the entropy weight method to calculate the ULUE and N-TU levels. The study uses the System generalized method of moment (Sys-GMM) to study the N-TU’s impact on the ULUE empirically. The results indicate: (i) the overall trend of new-type urbanization level is gradually increasing and has the characteristics of uneven spatial distribution between provinces. (ii) The ULUE shows a fluctuating upward trend during the studied period. (iii) The N-TU and its subsystems have significant positive effects on the ULUE. Overall, this study aims to explore the relationship between the N-TU and ULUE enriching the theoretical analysis and empirical research in related fields, thus helping decision makers in the assessment and design of policy recommendations.

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