Effect of precipitation on location choice of foreign direct investment in China

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of precipitation on the location of foreign direct investment (FDI) based on city-level data of China from 2003 to 2018. The results show that precipitation has a significant promoting effect on the regional agglomeration of FDI. This indicates that FDI location selection is more inclined to use the dilution ability of precipitation for pollution to reduce environmental costs, rather than relying solely on water resources. Further analysis shows that the preference of FDI enterprises on precipitation in the eastern region is significantly lower than that in the central and northeastern regions. This reflects the trend that FDI enterprises gradually shift to regions with a low degree of environmental regulation to reduce environmental costs. Therefore, the efforts made by economically developed cities to improve the regional ecological environment may be offset by the location adjustment of FDI enterprises, and precipitation has become an important stimulus for the location transfer of FDI enterprises.