A Study on Spatial Spillover Effect of Regional Integration on

Information Disclosure of Charitable Organizations: An Analysis

Based on Logistic Model

Fang Wang

*1,a

, Jia Dong

2, b

and Qiqi Chen

3,c

School of Economics and Management, North China University of Technology, Beijing 100144, China

School of Accountancy, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100098, China

College of Business Administration, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing 100070, China

Keywords: Regional Integration, Charitable Organization, Spatial Spillover Effects, Receiving and Dispatching of Funds

and Supplies, Information Disclosure Quality.

Abstract: The paper uses the disclosed receiving and dispatching information of Red Cross Societies of various cities

during the fight against COVID-19 as a research sample to empirically test the spatial spillover effects of

urban agglomeration construction. We find that the higher timeliness and relevance of information disclosure

in the Red Cross in urban agglomerations central cities, the higher timeliness and relevance of those in the

Red Cross in non-central cities. In addition, the spatial spillover effect of counterpart support can be enhanced

by intergovernmental cooperation.

1 INTRODUCTION

During the fight against COVID-19, the Red Cross

Societies in various places, as the official donation

channel, built a bridge of mutual assistance between

donors and recipients, and assumed the major respon-

sibility as an intermediary. However, in fact, due to

the lack of information disclosure mechanism and the

low level of attention, information problems related

to the receipt and use of anti-epidemic funds and ma-

terials appeared, posing challenges to the credibility

of the Red Cross. In recent years, with the develop-

ment of the internet and the enhancement of public

awareness, the information disclosure of Red Cross

Societies has received increasing attention. The gov-

ernment's gradual improvement of the disclosure sys-

tem has also normalized the information disclosure of

the Red Cross.

As the highest spatial organization form of urban

development, an urban agglomeration is a combina-

tion of several cities that are centrally distributed in

regions. Since the early 21st century, urban agglom-

erations have become a new regional unit for the

country to participate in global competition and inter-

national division of labor. For 10 consecutive years,

China has promoted urban agglomerations to be the

main space for promoting the country's new urbani-

zation. By February 18, 2019, the State Council has

successively approved 10 major national-level urban

agglomerations. The construction of urban agglomer-

ations is centered on central cities, driving non-cen-

tral cities to carry out regional integrated construction

and integrated development under a collaborative

mechanism.

This paper manually collects the publicity infor-

mation of the Red Cross for anti-epidemic funds and

materials during the epidemic period (January 26,

2020 - March 31, 2020) in cities and municipalities,

and applies text analysis technology to the infor-

mation disclosed by Red Cross in various places and

objectively measures the information quality.

2 THEORETICAL ANALYSIS

AND RESEARCH

HYPOTHESES

The quality of information disclosure of charitable or-

ganizations has received extensive attention. Scholars

at home and abroad have conducted extensive re-

search on its influencing factors, but most of them

only focus on the inherent characteristics of charitable

Wang, F., Dong, J. and Chen, Q.

A Study on Spatial Spillover Effect of Regional Integration on Information Disclosure of Charitable Organizations: An Analysis Based on Logistic Model.

DOI: 10.5220/0011739800003607

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Public Management, Digital Economy and Internet Technology (ICPDI 2022), pages 453-457

ISBN: 978-989-758-620-0

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

453

organizations (Liu, Wang, 2013; Liu, Zhang, 2013)

and have not investigated the cross-regional network

relationships of charitable organizations. Through the

construction of urban agglomerations based on econ-

omies of scale, it can both break through the admin-

istrative boundaries of a single city and improve the

comprehensive carrying capacity of the urban ag-

glomeration to realize the integrated development of

the regional economy (Yan, 2021).

With the progress of transportation facilities, the

time distance between cities is greatly reduced, so that

the elements between cities can flow freely, and then

the optimal state of resource allocation can be

achieved (Li, 2018). The rise of urban agglomeration

further promotes the rapid improvement of enterprise

competitiveness and even the regional economic level

through various spillover effects such as agglomera-

tion (Liu, 2021). It can be seen that the spatial corre-

lation effect plays an important role in understanding

the geographic distance between different cities in the

process of contemporary globalization (Ke, 2010).

The characteristics above require researchers to

fully consider the spatial effects of urban agglomera-

tion construction when examining the factors that af-

fect the quality of information disclosure by charita-

ble organizations and adhere to the research idea of

combining territorial characteristics and regional

linkages in the process of researching information

disclosure by charitable organizations, thereby en-

hancing the robustness of the analysis results. Neo-

classical growth theory emphasizes the impact of fac-

tor input on economic growth (Solow, 1957). How-

ever, based on the defects of the factor input-driven

growth model, new growth theory and new economic

geography theory began to pay more attention to the

impact of industrial agglomeration and its externali-

ties and knowledge spillovers on enterprise growth

(Krugman, 1991). Therefore, this paper proposes the

following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: The higher the information disclo-

sure quality of the Red Cross in the central city, the

higher the information disclosure quality of the Red

Cross in non-central city charitable organizations in

the same urban agglomeration.

At present, urban agglomerations in China have

become an extension of local public affairs manage-

ment (Suo, 2021), and intergovernmental collabora-

tion has expanded the function of urban agglomera-

tion construction. Mumford pointed out that, if eco-

nomic development wants to do better, it is necessary

to establish a regional authority with legal qualifica-

tions, planning, and investment power. The local gov-

ernments in the city group that maintain good com-

munication and coordination actually act as the re-

gional coordinating authority mentioned above. From

the perspective of public management, the more co-

operation among local governments in urban agglom-

erations, the more they can learn and exchange public

affairs management experience and learn from each

other's strengths. Therefore, this paper proposes the

following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: The more inter-governmental col-

laboration and interaction, the more significant the

spatial spillover effect of the quality of information

disclosure of the Red Cross in central cities.

3 EMPIRICAL MODELS AND

VARIABLE DEFINITIONS

3.1 Sample Data Sources and Variable

Definitions

3.1.1 Explained Variable: The Quality of In-

formation Disclosure by The Red Cross

of The Non-Central Cities

We use four measurement methods to evaluate the

quality characteristics of information disclosure of

anti-epidemic funds and materials by the Red Cross

of non-central cities. (1) Timeliness of daily disclo-

sure (Daily_Disclosure_Non-central), it takes 1 for

daily disclosure, otherwise 0. (2) Relevance of re-

ceived donation information (Detailed_Re-

ceive_Non-central), it takes 1 if receiving information

of donated materials is specific to the date, the names

of the donors and the amount of donations, otherwise

0. (3) Relevance of the use of donations (De-

tailed_Dispatch_Non-central), it takes 1 if usage in-

formation of donated materials is specific to the date,

the names of the donees and the amount of donations,

otherwise 0. (4) Intelligibility of the information (Lit-

eral_Interpretation_Non-central), it takes 1 if the title

of the disclosure clearly indicates "Fund Raising for

Fighting COVID-19 Epidemic Prevention and Con-

trol", otherwise 0.

3.1.2 Explanatory Variables: The Quality of

Information Disclosure by The Red

Cross in The Central Cities.

We use four similar measurement methods to evalu-

ate the quality characteristics of information disclo-

sure of anti-epidemic funds and materials by the Red

Cross of the central cities. Refer to the above.

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454

3.1.3 Moderating Variables

The moderating variable is the degree of complete-

ness of urban agglomeration construction. We use the

frequency of mentioning urban agglomerations (or

central cities) in the government work report of non-

central cities to reflect the completeness of urban ag-

glomeration construction. The higher the frequency

of mentioning, the higher the local government at-

taches importance to the construction of urban ag-

glomerations, and the more complete the construction

of urban agglomerations.

3.1.4 Control Variables

According to the selection principle of control varia-

bles (Bernerth, 2016), combined with the data availa-

bility of this project, the control variables in the

model include the following three categories. (1) To

control the supervision of the competent department,

we controlled the experience of the mayor in charge

of charity work and government's attention to public

welfare information disclosure. (2) To control the in-

ertia of historical information disclosure, we con-

trolled whether charitable organizations released in-

formation on the receipt and delivery of donated ma-

terials in the previous year and whether charitable or-

ganizations published relevant regulations. (3) To

control the characteristics of charitable organizations,

we controlled the average duration of charitable or-

ganizations in central cities of the urban agglomera-

tion at the beginning of the year, the duration of the

organization at the beginning of the year, and the

number of non-governmental charitable organiza-

tions in central and non-central cities of the urban ag-

glomeration at the beginning of the year. (4) We also

controlled the city fixed effect and the date fixed ef-

fect.

3.2 Model Settings

First, this paper uses model (1) to test whether the

construction of urban agglomerations affects the

quality of information disclosure by charitable organ-

izations. The explained variable Disclosure_Qual-

ity_Non-central and the main explanatory variable

Disclosure_Quality_Centralis are determined by four

aspects. Controls is a group of control variables. The

coefficient α

of Disclosure_Quality_Central is sup-

posed to be significantly positive if Hypothesis 1

holds.

εControls

entral_Quality_CDisclosureon-central_Quality_NDisclosure

+×+

×+=

(1)

Second, this paper uses model (2) to test whether

the completeness of urban agglomeration construc-

tion affects the spatial spillover effect. We focus on

the regression coefficient β

of the cross-term Disclo-

sure_Quality_Central×Intergovernmental_Collabo-

ration. The coefficient β

is supposed to be signifi-

cantly positive if Hypothesis 2 holds.

εControlsnllaborationmental_CoIntergoverβ

nllaborationmental_CoIntergoverentral_Quality_CDisclosureβ

entral_Quality_CDisclosureββon-central_Quality_NDisclosure

+×+×+

××+

×+=

(2)

4 EMPIRICAL RESULTS

4.1 Spatial Spillover Effects of Urban

Agglomeration Construction on

Information Disclosure by

Charitable Organizations

The main regression of this paper takes 10 national-

level urban agglomerations as the research objects

and examines the impact of the spillover effect of ur-

ban agglomeration construction on the quality of in-

formation disclosure by charitable organizations. Ta-

ble 1 shows the impact of the information disclosure

of charitable organizations in central cities of the ur-

ban agglomeration on the information disclosure of

charitable organizations in non-central cities during

the anti-epidemic period. On the one hand, it can be

seen from the regression results in column (1) that the

higher the timeliness of information disclosure of

charitable organizations in central cities of the urban

agglomeration, the shorter the information disclosure

time lag of charitable organizations in non-central cit-

ies. On the other hand, from the regression results in

columns (2)-(4), it can be seen that the more detailed

the disclosure of information on donations received

and dispatched by charitable organizations in central

cities of the urban agglomeration, the more granular

the information disclosed by charitable organizations

in non-central cities will be.

A Study on Spatial Spillover Effect of Regional Integration on Information Disclosure of Charitable Organizations: An Analysis Based on

Logistic Model

455

Table 1: The impact of information disclosure of charities in central cities on information disclosure of charities in non-central

cities (self-drawn).

Dep. Var=

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Daily_Disclosure

_Non-central

Detailed_Receive

_Non-central

Detailed_Dispatch

_Non-central

Literal_Interpretation

_Non-central

Daily_Disclosure_Central 0.040*

(1.902)

Detailed_Receive_Central 0.005***

(3.190)

Detailed_Dispatch_Central 0.023***

(3.343)

Literal_Interpretation_Cen-

tral

1.017**

(2.173)

Control Variables Yes Yes Yes Yes

Fixed Effects City, Year City, Year City, Year City, Year

Pair level Obs 15768 15768 15768 15768

Pseudo R

0.04 0.04 0.06 0.11

Table 2: The impact of intergovernmental collaboration on the spatial spillover effect of the main regression (self-drawn).

Dep. Var=

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Daily_Disclosure

_Non-central

Detailed_Receive

_Non-central

Detailed_Dispatch

_Non-central

Literal_Interpretation

_Non-central

Disclosure_Quality_Central 0.038 0.005** 0.027*** 1.012*

(1.593) (2.062) (3.243) (1.864)

Disclosure_Quality_Central

*Intergovernmental_

Collaboration

0.093*** 0.080*** 0.033** -0.006

(3.985) (2.864) (2.355) (-0.916)

Intergovernmental_Collabo-

ration

0.002* 0.003** 0.017*** 0.005**

(1.916) (2.345) (3.376) (2.427)

Control Variables Yes Yes Yes Yes

Fixed Effects City, Year City, Year City, Year City, Year

Pair level Obs 15768 15768 15768 15768

Pseudo R

0.04 0.05 0.06 0.11

4.2 The Impact of Intergovernmental

Collaboration on Information

Disclosure by Charities

To test Hypothesis 2, this paper examines whether in-

tergovernmental collaboration can strengthen the spa-

tial spillover effects reflected in the main regression.

Intergovernmental collaboration is measured by the

number of mentions of urban agglomeration (or cen-

tral city) in non-central city government work reports.

From the regression results in Table 2, it can be seen

that the intersection of intergovernmental collabora-

tion (Intergovernmental_Collaboration) and infor-

mation disclosure quality of central cities (Disclo-

sure_Quality_Central) are significant in columns (1)-

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456

(3), indicating that the more frequent intergovern-

mental collaboration, the information disclosure level

of charitable organizations in central cities of urban

agglomeration is more likely to affect charitable or-

ganizations in non-central cities. However, from the

cross item in column (4), it can be seen that the mod-

erating effect of intergovernmental collaboration on

"whether there is a text introduction" is not signifi-

cant. The above empirical findings have played a cer-

tain role in supporting Hypothesis 2, which is basi-

cally consistent with the conclusions of the existing

research (Wen, 2020).

5 CONCLUSION

The empirical conclusions help to strengthen the un-

derstanding of the information disclosure patterns of

charitable organizations in special periods and further

confirm the spatial spillover effect of urban agglom-

eration construction. From the perspective of charita-

ble organizations, the Red Cross needs to strengthen

the awareness of information disclosure and disclose

the donation information in detail, so that charities are

truly transparent and open to the public, and a positive

information disclosure environment is constructed.

From the perspective of regional construction, local

governments should recognize the importance of co-

operation between cities. From the perspective of the

public, attention should be paid to the information

disclosure of charitable organizations, and public su-

pervision and public evaluation can improve the qual-

ity of information disclosure of charitable organiza-

tions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The paper is supported by R&D Program of Beijing

Municipal Education Commission (SM2022

10009006); Basic Scientific Research Project of Bei-

jing Municipal Commission of Education

(110052972027/134); Scientific Research Fund of

North China University of Technology

(110051360002)

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A Study on Spatial Spillover Effect of Regional Integration on Information Disclosure of Charitable Organizations: An Analysis Based on

Logistic Model

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