Does the Accessibility of Regional Internal and External Traffic Play the Same Role in Achieving Anti-Poverty Goals?

Abstract

Traffic development can promote the flow of goods and people, which has long been widely considered to have a poverty reduction effect but, in fact, is not unbreakable. The development of traffic is similar to economic and social development, with internal and external characteristics, but few studies have explored the differences between the effects of their poverty reduction. Taking the land traffic of the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone (CCEZ) as an example, this paper represents traffic accessibility at a county level by relying on the average internal and external travel times. Rural poverty was identified by the pentagon of livelihoods to measure the Multidimensional Development Index (MDI). Furthermore, a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) model was used to explore the relationship and spatial differentiation characteristics between county traffic accessibility and poverty. The results show that the traffic accessibility of the counties in the CCEZ was quite different. The average internal travel time was between 0.16 and 7 h, and the average external travel time was between 4.2 and 10.6 h. The radiation gradient structure centered on Chengdu municipal districts and the Chongqing main urban area, and the accessibility level needed to be improved. Furthermore, the MDI values of each county in the CCEZ showed the structural characteristics of “large bottom and small top”; additionally, the higher the high-value group of MDI, the stronger the spatial aggregation and the more obvious the characteristics of regional differentiation. Finally, the relationship between traffic accessibility and poverty in counties cannot be generalized. The improvement of external traffic accessibility obviously helped to improve the poverty situation in the CCEZ; the improvement of internal traffic accessibility had a multidimensional impact, but it was mainly due to the occupation or spillover of livelihood capital in rural areas; counties accounting for 82.74% would even reduce the MDI and, thus, aggravate poverty.