Abstract: Under the background of the rapid economic transition from high-speed growth to high-quality development, urban sprawl, which is due to the land urbanization beyond population urbanization, is barely beneficial for high-quality and sustainable development. According to the data from 2001 to 2015 on the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the differential impact of industrial development on urban sprawl is examined. The results generally prove that：（1) on the first aspect of industrial structure, with the growing proportion of employment in the secondary industry, the degree of urban sprawl increases; nevertheless, with the advent of increasing proportion of employment in the tertiary industry, the pace of urban sprawl decreases;（2) on the second aspect of urban scale, it is the influence of the secondary industry on urban sprawl that plays a significant role in small and medium cities but not in large cities. The tertiary industry plays a prominent inhibitory role in large cities but not in small and medium cities, which mainly relates to the economic benefits of aggregation under different urban scales;(3) on the third aspect of the types of urban sprawl, it is the life service in the tertiary industry that promotes urban sprawl towards intensive development, while the secondary and the productive service industry promote the urban sprawl to excessive sprawling. All in all, in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the secondary industry should be rationally laid out, the tertiary industry should be vigorously developed, the agglomeration effect of the industry should be improved, and the urban sprawl that is caused by unreasonable development and blind investment attraction should be avoided.