Spatio-Temporal Evolution of Environmental Efficiency of Construction Land in Yangtze River Economic Zone

Regional innovation is an important research topic in economic geography, the spatio-temporal evolution and mechanism of regional innovation efficiency have recently become a hot for economic geographers. From the perspective of input and output efficiency, this paper constructs evaluation indicator of regional innovation, with the help of Constant Returns to Scale (CRS) and Variable Returns to Scale (VRS) models, and Malmquist indicator method of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), to analyze regional innovation performance, evolution trend, spatial differentiation, and evolution mechanism of Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration (YRDUA) of China. The results show that: (i) Innovation efficiency of YRDUA is generally low, most of which is less than 80 percent of optimal efficiency; however, it kept rising from 2000 to 2015. (ii) Spatial inequality of regional innovation in YRDUA is significant, with a spatial pattern in the shape of “Z”, composed by Hefei, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Ningbo, innovation efficiency of Shanghai is higher than Zhejiang, Anhui and Jiangsu. (iii) Technology progress is the most important influencing factor, all kinds of changing indicator show a trend of rise, and the total factor productivity is changing significantly. This research can provide theoretical reference for the YRDUA to achieve high-quality integration.

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Spatio-temporal evolution and driving effects of the ecological intensity of urban well-being in the Yangtze River Delta

Energy & Environment ◽

10.1177/0958305x211069324 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 0958305X2110693

Author(s):

Meijuan Hu ◽

Suleman Sarwar ◽

Zaijun Li ◽

Nianxing Zhou

Keyword(s):

Yangtze River ◽

Temporal Evolution ◽

Economic Effect ◽

Well Being ◽

Yangtze River Delta ◽

River Delta ◽

Sustainable Urban Development ◽

The Yangtze River ◽

Spatio Temporal ◽

The Yangtze River Delta

The fundamental goal of sustainable urban development is to maximize human well-being with minimum ecological consumption. The ecological intensity of urban well-being (EIWB) achieves an effective linkage among economic, social, and ecological systems, and it is an effective indicator for evaluating urban sustainable development. This study analyzed the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics and driving effects of the ecological intensity of urban well-being over 2000–2019 in the Yangtze River Delta. It was found that as the ecological consumption per unit well-being output decreased gradually, the improvement in well-being level and the increase in ecological consumption were increasingly delinked, and regional EIWB and its sub-dimensions tended to fluctuate. Urban EIWB was dominated by low and lower levels, urban economic well-being (ECWB) was increasingly dominated by the lower type, and urban social well-being (SOWB) and environmental well-being (ENWB) were dominated by the low level. The resource consumption, technology, and well-being effects distinctively inhibited the decrease in regional EIWB and the economic effect exerted an obvious boosting function, whereas environmental consumption effect, scale effect, and efficiency effect had no obvious impact. The variation in urban EIWB was mainly driven by two-factor dominance, featuring economic and technological effects.

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