On Influencing Factors of Agricultural Product Trade Network Topology of Countries along “the Belt and Road”

Abstract

With the unweighted and weighted agricultural product trade networks of 65 countries along “the Belt and Road” from 2004 to 2017 as the explained variables and these countries’ GDP network, bordering network, language network and religion network as the explaining variables, the regression analysis has been made through QAP regression analysis method, and the influence of the above four factors on the establishment of agricultural product trade links of “the Belt and Road” and trade flow dissected in this paper. According to the study, it has been found that the countries’ economic development level (GDP), land bordering, same language and same religious belief have a positive effect on this establishment in the unweighted undirected network, and this has statistical significance for most of the years. In the weighted network, the symbol of GDP network variables is positive, and all of them have passed 1 percent of significance level, which shows that the greater the difference in economic development level between two countries is, the more the trade flow between two countries will be increased. In the weighted network, the symbols of the bordering network and the language network representing the distance features are both positive, and they have more significant effect than that in the unweighted network. The religion has a negative influence and a smaller coefficient than that of any other influencing factor, and with poor significance, it has not passed 10 percent of significance level test.