Title: Closer to causality: How effective is spatial planning in governing built-up land expansion in Fujian Province, China? Research objective: The Major Function Oriented Zone (MFOZ), the first strategic spatial plan in China, is developed to achieve a coordinated regional development, through spatial regulation and zoning of development. The MFOZ he MFOZ divided land into four major function-oriented zones: The development-optimized zone, the development-prioritised zone, the development-restricted zone, and the development-prohibited zone. We used propensity score marching to evaluate the effect of the MFOZ on built-up land expansion in Fujian Province over three time intervals (2013–2015, 2013–2018 and 2013–2020). Data: Data.xlsx contains the variables of 954 towns in Fujian Province. Town_ID is the town unique ID; County_ID is the county unique ID; City_ID is the city unique ID; MFOZ is the the development-prioritised zone and the development-restricted zone (The development-optimized zone and the development-prohibited zone are excluded); Builtup_13_15 is the built-up land expansion from 2013 to 2015; Builtup_13_18 is the built-up land expansion from 2013 to 2018; Builtup_13_20 is the built-up land expansion from 2013 to 2020; Dis2water is the Euclidean distance from the town to the nearest waterbody; Slope is the the average slope within the town; GDP is the average GDP in 2010 within the town; Pop is the average population in 2010 within the town; Road is the average population in 2010 within the town; Dis2city is the Euclidean distance from the town to the nearest prefectural city centre; Nei_Arable, Nei_Forest, and Nei_Built.up are the area of arable land, forest land, and built-up land neighbouring town i in 2010. Method: we used the propensity score matching to compare the changes in the amount of built-up land in the towns of the development-prioritised zone with the matched towns of the development-restricted zone. Additionally, we used three evaluation intervals (2013–2015, 2013–2018 and 2013–2020) to evaluate temporal variation in the causal effect of the MFOZ on built-up land expansion.