The Impact of Public Infrastructure on Regional Social Welfare——An Analysis Based on the Spatial Durbin Model

Abstract Investing in public infrastructure is an important way to improve regional social welfare, and its effects on social welfare vary spatially across regions. Based on data from 33 counties (cities, districts) in China from 2005 to 2019, this paper employed SDM(spatial durbin model) to analyze the impact of public infrastructure on regional social welfare growth. The results show that public infrastructure has a positive impact on social welfare. Different types of infrastructure have significantly different effects on social welfare. Energy, transportation, communication, and environmental infrastructure have a positive impact on social welfare, while education, medical, and cultural infrastructure exhibit a “U-shaped” feature of initially inhibiting and then promoting social welfare. The spatial spillover effects of energy, transportation, and communication infrastructure on social welfare are also significantly positive, while those of the environment, education, medical, and cultural infrastructure are significantly negative. Therefore, it is necessary to plan for the long term, classify infrastructure construction, strengthen interregional cooperation, and enhance public infrastructure construction to improve the level of regional social welfare.