Zhijiao Qin

This article examines the driving forces of food security in the areas of the Nam Theun2 Hydropower Project (NT2) in Khamuan, Laos. A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from 100 NT2 resettlement households based on the random sampling technique. A linear regression technique was used to identify the influence of household food insecurity. The result showed that household size, food price, drought, shock, household income per month, number of laborers, gender of the household head, and farmland areas are important factors for household food insecurity. Policies should focus on irrigation that will permit yearlong cultivation. This will in turn become the stimulus for a concatenation of events in the process of development. People will resettle to practice agriculture while also expanding non-agricultural employment. Businesses in skills training, fish processing, textile, services, and crafts will be created, boosting household income. With inevitable population expansion, education in family planning will also be necessary to control population in relation to available resources.

Mixed-use development is theoretically considered to enhance the residential value of an area. However, limited empirical research has focused on European and North American cities. HOPSCA is a real estate project that integrates hotels, offices, parks, shopping malls, conference centers, and apartments. As an important mixed-use development project in Chinese cities, HOPSCA is designed to improve the quality of urban life and to enhance the residential value of an area. Few studies have explicitly examined the effect of HOPSCA on residential property values, let alone linked this question to particular types of HOPSCA. To bridge this research gap, we selected Wuhan City in China as a case study to explore the effects of HOPSCA on residential property values. Specifically, we used the potential model to quantify the effects of HOPSCA and used the geographically weighted regression (GWR) method to estimate the relationship between HOPSCA variables and residential property values. The results are as follows: (1) the effects of HOPSCA on residential property values are statistically significant with positive and negative effects. The balanced-development HOPSCA generated the greatest effects, with the highest premium of 10.76% placed on residential properties. Moderate price premiums of 3.57% and 1.83% were generated under the influence of the commerce-oriented HOPSCA and housing-oriented HOPSCA, respectively. By contrast, the business-oriented HOPSCA exerted a negative effect on residential property (−2.43%). (2) Significant spatial heterogeneity exists on the effect of HOPSCA on residential property values. The results showed that the influence of different types of HOPSCA, viz. the higher the compatibility between the HOPSCA type and the socioeconomic context of Wuhan, the higher the premium captured by residential properties within the city areas. HOPSCA benefits the improvement of the quality of urban life, which promotes urban development. For policy makers and real estate developers, our findings suggest that matching the development types and the spatial layouts of HOPSCA with the regional socioeconomic contexts is critical for enhancing the value performance of such projects.