Impact of High-Speed Rail Network Development on Airports: Evidence from China and Japan

We explore the impacts of high-speed rail (HSR) developments on airport-level traffic by considering not only the availability of air-HSR intermodal linkage between the airport and HSR station but also the position of the airport’s city in the HSR network. The latter is measured by both the degree centrality (to reflect connectivity) and the harmonic centrality (to reflect accessibility). Using a sample of 46 airports in China and a sample of 16 airports in Japan over the period of 2007-2015, we conduct regression analysis and compare the effects of HSR network development on airports in these two Northeast Asian countries. We find that as HSR connectivity or accessibility increases, there is, on average, a decline in airports’ domestic and total traffic in China but little change in Japan. Meanwhile, we observe a strong traffic feeding effect of HSR: that is, hub airports may experience a total traffic increase, and the magnitude is larger when air-HSR intermodal linkage is available. On the other hand, non-hub airports without air-HSR linkage experience the most traffic reduction in China, but they experience little total traffic change in Japan. Our analysis also reveals some differentiated impacts of HSR connectivity and accessibility, especially in China.