Abstract: Private investment decision-making is subjective and decentralized, which may be affected by investment in related areas. Based on the inter-provincial panel data from 2004 to 2019, this paper conducts an empirical study of the cross regional interactive behaviors of private investments in China. The results show that: (1) after controlling the influences of economy, government and market factors, China's private investment exhibits significant positive spatial correlation, in which there exist complementary behavioral interactions; (2) the spillover effect, the competition and cooperation effect and the information effect are the important causes for the cross regional behavioral interaction of private investments; (3) the competition and cooperation effect is dominant among the three types of mechanisms, in which the capital flow between the regions with similar economic structure and the energy-based cooperation between the eastern region and the western region are the chief forms of the competition and cooperation effect; the information effect plays an important role in the investment interactions of the small and medium-sized enterprises, there exists significant“Peer Effect”, while the impact of spillover effect is weaker. In view of this, the local governments should pay attention to the policy amplification effect of private investment interaction, smooth the channels of factor flows and guide the effective aggregation of factors.

Key words: private investment, behavioral interaction, factor flow, spatial metrology