Spatial Pattern Evolution Characteristics and Influencing Factors in County Economic Resilience in China

In the face of shocks, a region's economic resilience decides whether it can quickly recover or slip into long-term economic stagnation. This study took 2801 counties in China as the research object and distinguished them into long-term and short-term economic resilience by taking 2007-2020 as the research time period, and used spatial autocorrelation, the semi-variance function, and the geodetector method to analyze the spatial evolution pattern and driving mechanism of economic resilience of China's counties in different time periods. The research found that: (1) From a long-term perspective, the economic resilience of China's counties was dominated by the moderate level of resilience, and although its characteristics varied slightly over time, the overall performance showed that the level of resilience was increasing. Over time, the number of counties with very high levels of resilience has been increasing, and the number of counties with very low levels has been gradually decreasing. (2) In terms of spatial layout, China's county economic resilience exhibited spatial autocorrelation, with similar areas clustered and distributed spatially, with high-high concentration (H-H) and hot spot (99% confidence) areas distributed in the eastern coast and its hinterland, and low-low concentration (L-L) and cold spot (99% confidence) areas distributed in Inner Mongolia and the northeast. The evolution of its spatial pattern was influenced by both stochastic and structural factors, and the spatial divergence was mainly reflected in the northeast-southwest direction, while the northwest-southeast direction was more balanced. (3) Long-term economic resilience and short-term economic resilience had different influencing factors. The industrial structure diversification index, which characterized economic factors, could significantly improve the long-term economic resilience of cities, while the influencing factors of short-term economic resilience differed from period to period.