Government land supply and cropland abandonment under the Social-Ecological System (SES) framework: Spatiotemporal...

Cropland abandonment (CA) has become a major form of land-use change across Global South countries (GSCs). As a policy instrument used by local governments to promote urbanization and industrialization in China, construction land supply (CLS) plays a critical role in shaping rural-urban factor flows and land-use transitions. However, systematic analyses of the relationship between CLS and CA remain scarce, limiting a deeper understanding of CA. Based on the SES framework, this study analyzes the theoretical link between CLS and CA. It employs spatial analysis, the Tapio decoupling model, and a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model to systematically investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics, spatial associations, and predictive relationships between CLS and CA in China. The results show that: (1) from 2007 to 2022, CLS in China experienced a stage-wise evolution characterized by "growth-contraction-recovery," while its spatial pattern gradually evolved from "point-like agglomeration" to "area-wide enclosure," with the gravity center shifting overall from east to west and from north to south; (2) from 1992 to 2022, CA underwent a process of "increase-decline," exhibiting a zonal agglomeration pattern characterized by "more in the west and less in the east, higher in the south and lower in the north," with its gravity center generally migrating from north to south in a "northward first, then southward" trajectory; (3) CLS and CA exhibited a stable negative spatial correlation, forming pronounced H-L and L-H spatial mismatch patterns; meanwhile, most cities achieved decoupling between CLS and CA; and (4) CLS exerted a significant positive effect on CA with both lagged and persistent characteristics, and CLS was identified as a unidirectional Granger cause of CA. This study deepens the understanding of land-use change under coupled social-ecological systems. It provides scientific guidance on coordinating the expansion of construction land with farmland protection and optimizing territorial spatial governance.