Spatially non-stationary relationships between urban residential land price and impact factors in Wuhan city, China

• Explored spatially non-stationary relationships of land price and impact factors.
• Relationships between land price and impact factors vary over space.
• GWR is effective in revealing the marginal prices of impact factors.
• GWR is helpful to explaining the spatial variation of land price in Wuhan, China.

Land price plays an important role in guiding land resource allocation for urban planning and development, particularly in big cities of fast developing countries where infrastructures and populations change frequently. Therefore, detecting spatially implicit information in the spatial pattern of relationships between land price and related impact factors is critical. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) analysis was conducted in this study for the purpose in Wuhan, China, by using a 10-year panel data set of residential land price. Based on twelve factors in three aspects (land attributes, location factors and neighborhood attributes), an evaluation index system of resident land price was established. The spatial distributions of estimated coefficients and pseudo t-values of three major explanatory variables (floor area ratio, distance to nearest center business district (CBD) and distance to nearest lake), obtained from GWR analysis, indicated that their relationships of the impact factors with land price are spatially non-stationary. The positive impact of floor area ratio on land price is more significant in highly developed areas than in less developed areas. Conversely, the negative impact of distance to nearest CBD on land price is larger in highly developed areas than in less developed areas. Moreover, wealthier dwellers may be willing to pay a higher price for a good lake view (especially views of small lakes), but infrastructure barriers (near some large lakes) cause negative effect. The outputs of this study, which provide detailed information on the relationships between land price and impact factors in local areas, are promising for urban planners to scientifically evaluate land price and make area-specific strategies.