Business connectivity, air transport and the urban hierarchy: A case study in East Asia

Abstract

This paper explores the effect of business connectivity between cities on their air traffic connections, and in turn on their place in a region's urban hierarchy. Its focus of attention is East Asia, where economic development is underpinned by a complex set of international flows of trade and investment. Business connectivity is a key part of these flows. The research incorporates a measure of business connections in a regression model that previously relied on GDP per head, population and distance to account for international air links. Results confirm that business connectivity is a more important influence on the level of international air links within East Asia, and plays a major role in explaining the changes in city rank over time. The paper concludes with suggestions that possible incorporation of domestic air travel (itself larger than the intra-regional flows in this region) could enrich the insight of this approach.

Integrative Potential of Central European Metropolises With a Special Focus on the Visegrad Countries

“…The evaluation of economic interactivity (Matsumoto, Domae, & O'Connor, 2016;Calatayud, Palacin, Mangan, Jackson, & Ruiz-Rua, 2016) is based on a modified gravity model as a standard tool of a qualified estimate of potential interactions, especially in conditions of insufficient data availability:…”

The magnitude of detours faced by commercial flights: A global assessment

“…Most of the time, scholars who need to consider distance flown will use great-circle distances. Typical cases include estimating fuel burnt and/or GHGs emissions (e.g., Jamin et al, 2004;Miyoshi and Mason, 2009;Scheelhaase et al, 2010;Park and O'Kelly, 2014;Budd and Suau-Sanchez, 2016), tankering strategies in aviation (e.g., Cames, 2007), the investigation of airline cost structure (Swan and Adler, 2006;Zuidberg, 2014) and interaction models (Matsumoto, 2007;Hwang and Shiao, 2011;Mao et al, 2015;Matsumoto et al, 2016). Only a few scholars (e.g., Miyoshi and Mason, 2009;Budd and Suau-Sanchez, 2016;Turgut et al, 2019) have highlighted that great-circle distances are shorter than actual distance flown, and even fewer studies have applied corrective factors to great-circle distance to avoid underestimations (see previous section).…”

Measuring the Influence of the Commodity Market Performance over the Supply and Demand of Regional Air Travel

“…Fernandes et al (2014) point how previous studies on the impact of economic activity over the air transport industry usually associates GDP to the country-wide demand generation, failing to address how the economic importance of a city (called by the authors as hierarchical ranking) stimulates air transport services to that city. Also, Matsumoto et al (2016), analyzing the volume xx/xx 03/12 of air service in East Asia, also point that economic interaction, called by the authors as business connectivity between cities acts as a driver for air transport services. This paper, then, states evidence that if a certain region has a specialized economic activity, any changes in that activity also affect air transport services to that region, to a given extent.…”

“…Recently, studies of Profillidis and Botzoris (2015), Hazel (2018) and Matsumoto et al (2016) have also analyzed the relationships between economic activity and supply and demand for air transport services on different markets around the globe. Profillidis and Botzoris (2015), conducting a research on seven different markets around the globe, and using calibrated econometric models, have found causal relations between GDP growth on those seven markets and the evolution of air transport demand leading to a plausible estimation for air transport services until 2030.…”

“…Between another findings, one that is relevant for this study is that using GDP growth as a basis to capacity growth, airlines have managed to slightly increase its revenue per available seat mile. Matsumoto et al (2016) presented a research that analyzes not only the role played by economic growth, but also demographic variables and trade flows as drivers for the demand of air transport services.…”