Promotion incentives for local officials and the expansion of urban construction land in China: Using the Yangtze River Delta as a case study

China’s promotion incentive is the main motivation behind local officials’ decisions regarding the expansion of urban construction land, and is therefore crucial to understanding the mechanism behind the expansion of urban construction land. This paper discusses the promotion incentive’s theoretical influence on urban construction land expansion. Then, using 25 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region (including Shanghai and prefecture-level cities in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang) as samples, we estimate two econometric models that reflect the relationship between local officials’ characteristics and changes in the scale and efficiency of urban construction land to test the specific influence of different local officials on the expansion of urban construction land when driven by the promotion incentive. Our results show that the promotion sources of local officials and their terms in office significantly impact changes in the urban construction land scale and utilization efficiency. We also found that the ages of local officials significantly impact the efficiency of urban construction land use, but have an insignificant impact on the expansion of urban construction land. Considering China’s unique administrative system, the promotion incentive has a definite but divergent influence on mayors and municipal party secretaries regarding urban expansion. This paper concludes with policy proposals to improve the administrative management system and regulation on urban construction land expansion.