Analysis of regional economic disparities in Gansu Province based on ESDA and GIS

Based on the global and local spatial autocorrelation analyses of Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis(ESDA),it is investigated the spatial dynamics of regional disparities at the county level in Gansu Province by analyzing per capita GDP data in 2004,with the support of ArcView GIS and GeoDA software.Empirical results show that the center of population and GDP have a significant offset with the center of geometry.The overall county level spatial disparities of regional economy in Gansu Province is great in 2004,and the global Moran's I is 0.391 1,which indicates that there are significant positive spatial autocorrelation of per capita GDP in Gansu Province.That is,the relatively high(low) developed county tends to be located nearby other high(low)developed counties more often than expected due to random chance.Local Moran's I scatter plots and LISA(Local Indicators of Spatial Association) cluster map have been used to test the local pattern of the Gansu economic development.