The Spatial Correlation and Driving Mechanism of Wood-Based Products Trade Network in RCEP Countries

Clarifying the spatial correlation and driving mechanism of wood-based products trade network is conducive to promoting the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to a higher level. Firstly, we explored the characteristics of spatial correlation and evolution tendency of raw material-type wood-based products trade network (TN-WFPM) and product-type wood-based products trade network (TN-WFPP) from the overall characteristics, centrality, and node coreness of the networks according to social network analysis method. Then we analyzed the driving mechanism of the spatial correlation according to the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP). The results show that, compared with TN-WFPM, the density, reciprocity, and agglomeration of the TN-WFPP are relatively stronger. The centrality and evolution characteristics of RCEP countries are different in the networks. The coreness of China and Thailand in the TN-WFPP has always been in the top two, while the coreness of China, Japan, and Korea has increased significantly and China has been the top since 2010 in the TN-WFPM. Factors like cultural distance, forest resource endowment, forest certification area, economic scale, economic distance, and free trade agreements (FTA) have significant impacts on the spatial correlation of wood-based products trade among RCEP countries. Furthermore, the impacts of different factors on the two kinds of networks are heterogeneous.