Objective The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is experiencing intense pressure on land resources due to rapid population growth and economic expansion. The GBA aims to build a world-class bay area, and this urgently requires the efficient use of limited land resources. While previous studies have examined land use in the GBA, most of them focus only on broad land-use categories, thus insufficient to analyze full-sector land use within the economic system. This study constructs a full-sector land use inventory for the GBA and identifies the critical regions and sectors that drive land use across the multi-regional economic supply chains. This effort can help improve the efficiency of land resource utilization in the GBA throughout the processes of the economic supply chains, thereby providing a multi-dimensional scientific basis for regulatory policies aimed at alleviating land resource pressure in the GBA.

Methods This study focuses on the 11 cities in the GBA and constructs a full-sector (46 economic sectors per city) land use inventory in 2022 (i.e., production-based perspective) based on multi-source data including road networks, points of interest (POIs), remote sensing images, and official statistics. The direct land use area of each economic sector in the GBA is taken as the environmental satellite account of the multi-regional input-output table of the GBA. Based on the environmentally extended multi-regional input-output model, this study quantifies the land use area of upstream sectors driven by the final demand for products of a certain sector in a certain city through multi-regional supply chains (i.e., consumption-based perspective). Meanwhile, critical transmission sectors of the supply chain network in the GBA were identified from the betweenness-based perspective.

Results In 2022, the total land use of economic sectors across 11 cities in the GBA was 24,612 square kilometers. From the production perspective, Jiangmen, Huizhou, and Guangzhou are the primary contributors to direct land use within the GBA. The “agricultural” sector is the main land use sector. For non-agricultural sectors, the service sectors (e.g., “wholesale and retail” and “accommodation and catering”) contribute a lot to the land use of the GBA. In particular, the land use area of the “wholesale and retail” sector in four cities, including Dongguan and Guangzhou, ranks among the top five in terms of non-agricultural sector land use. From the consumption perspective, 27% of the total land use area in the GBA was driven by the final demand of cities within the GBA, of which consumption in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong accounted for the largest share of land use area. Over 70% of the land use in the GBA is driven by consumption from external regions. In particular, external regions’ final demand for manufacturing and agricultural products drives extensive land use in the GBA, while the final demand for the tertiary sector from cities within the GBA has led to considerable land use. From the betweenness perspective, the top 10% of key transmission centers for land use in the GBA mainly originate from Guangzhou, Foshan, and Shenzhen, with a focus on sectors such as “construction” and “leasing and business services”. Among them, the “construction” sector in Guangzhou transferred 166 square kilometers of embodied land use, making it the sector with the largest impact on land use in the supply chain network of the GBA.

Conclusion The identification of key regions and sectors varies across perspectives, as do the corresponding policy implications. The land resource management in the GBA should adopt multi-pronged policies and measures from multiple perspectives, and formulate targeted measures for key regions and sectors. Thus, the efficiency of land resource utilization could be improved across the entire processes of the economic supply chains. This study provides multi-perspective policy recommendations for alleviating the shortage of land resources. From the production perspective, critical cities identified in this study (e.g., Jiangmen and Huizhou) could adopt stringent land-use standards and promote the complementary distribution of land resources across regions to alleviate land resource scarcity. From the consumption perspective, pilot programs for land footprint labeling of products can be carried out in critical sectors (e.g., “wholesale and retail” and “accommodation and catering”) in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, guiding residents to choose low-land consumption products. From the betweenness perspective, it is essential to improve production efficiency in critical sectors (e.g., the “construction” sector in Guangzhou) by advancing production technologies and minimizing material waste. Future research could be extended to comparative analyses of more highly urbanized regions worldwide, deepening the understanding of differences in the supply chain transmission mechanisms of land use under diverse development patterns, and providing more targeted theoretical and practical references for sustainable land use in global metropolitan areas.