Spatial and temporal pattern evolution and influencing factors of energy–environmental efficiency: A case study of Yangtze River urban agglomeration in China

2020 ◽  
pp. 0958305X2092311
Author(s):  
Zhaoqiang Zhong ◽  
Benhong Peng ◽  
Ehsan Elahi
Keyword(s):  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Temporal Pattern ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Polar Nucleus ◽  
Environmental Efficiency ◽  
Urban Agglomeration ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
Tobit Regression ◽  
Positive Effects

Improving energy–environmental efficiency is prerequisite for sustainable development. In order to explore ways to improve energy–environmental efficiency, this paper uses the undesired output slack-based model to measure the energy–environmental efficiency of the Yangtze River urban agglomeration based on the input and output index data from 2008 to 2017, and its spatial and temporal pattern evolution is analyzed by using kernel density estimation, Gini coefficient, and coefficient of variation. Moreover, the Tobit regression model is used to analyze the influencing factors of the energy–environmental efficiency of the Yangtze River urban agglomeration. The results indicate that the energy–environmental efficiency of each city is increased continuously, and the regional differences are gradually narrowed. The spatial pattern is changed from polar nucleus type to valley type, and finally the distribution characteristics of “overall high” are formed. Overall, the energy–environmental efficiency presents a spatial layout of “high in the east and low in the west.” The regression results show that the level of economic development and energy–environmental efficiency are “U-type” associated characteristics, and government regulation and population density have significant positive effects on it. Industrial structure and technological progress have negative effects on it, and the effect of opening degree is not significant.

scholarly journals Green Development Efficiency Measurement and Influencing Factors of the Paper Industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1286
Author(s):  
Yunbo Xiang ◽  
Shengyun Wang ◽  
Yong Zhang ◽  
Zhijun Dai
Keyword(s):  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Paper Industry ◽  
Hunan Province ◽  
Theil Index ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
Gravity Center ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Green Development

The paper industry is a traditional industry with extensive consumption of resources and energy and more pollutant discharge. This industry is closely related to production and life activities. Under the general requirement of “to step up conservation of the Yangtze River and stop its over development,” the paper industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt should urgently undergo green transformation and development. Based on the undesirable slack-based measure model, spatial gravity center, Kernel density function, Theil index, and panel model, this study examines the green development efficiency and its influencing factors of the paper industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2001 to 2016. Results showed the following: (1) from 2001 to 2016, the green development efficiency of the paper industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt had been steadily improved, but the overall efficiency value is not high, which has a great potential for improvement. The green development efficiency of the paper industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt presents the regional differentiation law of gradient increasing in the upper, middle, and lower reaches. (2) According to the gravity center trajectory, the efficiency center of the green development of the paper industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt is located in the middle reaches of Hunan Province and Hubei Province and moves to the southwest. This case indicates that the green development efficiency of the paper industry in provinces and cities in the southwest has been improved. (3) The regional differences in the green development efficiency of the paper industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt show the characteristics of narrowing fluctuations. The regional differences are the primary sources of the difference in the green development efficiency of the paper industry. (4) The enterprise scale, science and technology investment, and industrial structure have significant positive effects on the green development efficiency of the paper industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. On the contrary, environmental regulation and foreign investment intensity have significant negative effects. However, the above factors have different effects on the green development efficiency of the paper industry in the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

scholarly journals Total-Factor Eco-Efficiency and Its Influencing Factors in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration, China

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (20) ◽  
pp. 3814 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongyi Cheng ◽  
Tianyuan Shao ◽  
Huilin Lai ◽  
Manhong Shen ◽  
Yi Li
Keyword(s):  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
Yangtze River Delta ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Urban Agglomeration ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
The Yangtze River Delta

Urban agglomerations are not only the core areas leading economic growth but also the fronts facing severe resource and environmental challenges. This paper aimed to increase our understanding of urban eco-efficiency and its influencing factors and thus provide the scientific basis for green development. We developed a model that incorporates super-efficiency, slacks-based-measure, and global-frontier technology to calculate the total-factor eco-efficiency (TFEE) and used a spatial panel Tobit model to take into account spatial spillover effects. An empirical study was conducted utilizing a prefecture-level dataset in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration (YRDUA) from 2003 to 2016. The main findings reveal that significant spatial differences exist in TFEE in the YRDUA: high-TFEE cities were majorly located in the coastal areas, while low-TFEE cities were mostly situated inland. Overall, TFEE shows a trend of “decline first and then rise with fluctuation”; the disparity between inland and coastal regions has expanded. Further regression analysis suggests that industrial structure, environmental regulation, and innovation were positively related to TFEE, while foreign direct investment was not conducive to the growth in TFEE. The relationship between population intensity and urban eco-efficiency is an inverted U-shaped curve. Finally, several specific policy implications were raised based on the results.

scholarly journals Research on Urban Spatial Connection and Network Structure of Urban Agglomeration in Yangtze River Delta—Based on the Perspective of Information Flow

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (19) ◽  
pp. 10288
Author(s):  
Qiaowen Lin ◽  
Mengyu Xiang ◽  
Lu Zhang ◽  
Jinjiang Yao ◽  
Chao Wei ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Yangtze River Delta ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Urban Agglomeration ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
Flow Network ◽  
The Yangtze River Delta

Exploration of urban spatial connections and network structures of urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta, as well as its influencing factors, is of great significance regarding optimization of the development pattern of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration and promotion of regional high-quality development. Therefore, based on Baidu index data in 2015 and 2019, this paper first analyzes the spatiotemporal variation characteristics of information-flow connections in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration. Then it uses social network analysis to explore the information-flow network structure in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, and finally explores the influencing factors of information-flow intensity in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The total amount of information flow in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration has had no obvious change, and the coverage of information flow in the central urban circle has expanded. (2) The network hierarchy presents a relatively stable “pyramid” distribution pattern, which tends to develop into a “spindle” pattern. (3) The overall network density of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration is high and is increasing. The backbone network is a “triangle” structure. The central cities in the region are stable, and the subgroups are adjacent to each other geographically. (4) Gross Domestic Product, resident population of the region and the number of Internet broadband subscribers all have important effects on the total information flow, among which the number of Internet broadband subscribers has the greatest effect on the total information flow. In addition, urban functions and their positioning, urban events, history and culture, and other factors that are difficult to quantify also have a certain impact on the information-flow network among cities.

scholarly journals Temporal-Spatial Structure and Influencing Factors of Urban Energy Efficiency in China’s Agglomeration Areas

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 10961
Author(s):  
Luping Zhang ◽  
Yingying Zhu ◽  
Liwei Fan
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Spatial Association ◽  
Urban Agglomeration ◽  
Spatial Network ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
Urban Agglomerations ◽  
Urban Energy

Energy efficiency has proved to be effective in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and is significant to carbon neutrality targets. Urban agglomeration is the major engine of urbanization supporting economic growth. To optimizing the spatial exchange structure to improve regional energy efficiency by integrating the total factor energy efficiency model and social network analysis, this study constructs the spatial network of energy efficiency among cities within five major urban agglomerations in China for the period 2011–2018 and investigates their spatial association characteristics. The influencing factors of each spatial network structure are also explored by the quadratic assignment procedure method. The findings show that the spatial association of energy efficiency within each urban agglomeration presents a typical network structure, but with considerable disparity among urban agglomerations. Most cities in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta are closely connected with each other, while the surrounding cities in the areas of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Chengyu and the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River highly depend on their corresponding central cities. The spatial adjacency and GDP per capita determine the urban spatial relationship of the energy efficiency within urban agglomerations. In addition, the spatial correlation of urban energy efficiency in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Chengyu and Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River areas is also affected by the differences in energy consumption, capital stock, number of labor force and pollutant emission. Some suggestions for improving urban energy efficiency are discussed.

scholarly journals The Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Urban-Rural Coordinated Development and Its Driving Forces in Yangtze River Delta

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 495
Author(s):  
Daizhong Tang ◽  
Mengyuan Mao ◽  
Jiangang Shi ◽  
Wenwen Hua
Keyword(s):  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Yangtze River Delta ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Urban Agglomeration ◽  
System Level ◽  
Actual State ◽  
Coordinated Development ◽  
Urban Rural

This paper conducts an analytical study on the urban-rural coordinated development (URCD) in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRDUA), and uses data from 2000–2015 of 27 central cities to study the spatial and temporal evolution patterns of URCD and to discover the influencing factors and driving forces behind it through PCA, ESDA and spatial regression models. It reveals that URCD of the YRDUA shows an obvious club convergence phenomenon during the research duration. The regions with high-level URCD gather mainly in the central part of the urban agglomeration, while the remaining regions mostly have low-level URCD, reflecting the regional aggregation phenomenon of spatial divergence. At the same time, we split URCD into efficiency and equity: urban-rural efficient development (URED) also exhibits similar spatiotemporal evolution patterns, but the patterns of urban-rural balanced development (URBD) show some variability. Finally, by analyzing the driving forces in major years during 2000–2015, it can be concluded that: (i) In recent years, influencing factors such as government financial input and consumption no longer play the main driving role. (ii) Influencing factors such as industrialization degree, fixed asset investment and foreign investment even limit URCD in some years. The above results also show that the government should redesign at the system level to give full play to the contributing factors depending on the actual state of development in different regions and promote the coordinated development of urban and rural areas. The results of this study show that the idea of measuring URCD from two dimensions of efficiency and equity is practical and feasible, and the spatial econometric model can reveal the spatial distribution heterogeneity and time evolution characteristics of regional development, which can provide useful insights for urban-rural integration development of other countries and regions.

scholarly journals Spatiotemporal Distribution Characteristics and Driving Forces of PM2.5 in Three Urban Agglomerations of the Yangtze River Economic Belt

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 2222
Author(s):  
Jin-Wei Yan ◽  
Fei Tao ◽  
Shuai-Qian Zhang ◽  
Shuang Lin ◽  
Tong Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Geographically Weighted Regression ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
National Level ◽  
National Development ◽  
Urban Agglomeration ◽  
Spatiotemporal Distribution ◽  
Weighted Regression ◽  
Series Data ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
Urban Agglomerations

As part of one of the five major national development strategies, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), including the three national-level urban agglomerations (the Cheng-Yu urban agglomeration (CY-UA), the Yangtze River Middle-Reach urban agglomeration (YRMR-UA), and the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRD-UA)), plays an important role in China’s urban development and economic construction. However, the rapid economic growth of the past decades has caused frequent regional air pollution incidents, as indicated by high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Therefore, a driving force factor analysis based on the PM2.5 of the whole area would provide more information. This paper focuses on the three urban agglomerations in the YREB and uses exploratory data analysis and geostatistics methods to describe the spatiotemporal distribution patterns of air quality based on long-term PM2.5 series data from 2015 to 2018. First, the main driving factor of the spatial stratified heterogeneity of PM2.5 was determined through the Geodetector model, and then the influence mechanism of the factors with strong explanatory power was extrapolated using the Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) models. The results showed that the number of enterprises, social public vehicles, total precipitation, wind speed, and green coverage in the built-up area had the most significant impacts on the distribution of PM2.5. The regression by MGWR was found to be more efficient than that by traditional Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), further showing that the main factors varied significantly among the three urban agglomerations in affecting the special and temporal features.

scholarly journals The Evolution of the Urban Spatial Pattern in the Yangtze River Economic Belt: Based on Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 2733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Li ◽  
Hua Shao ◽  
Nan Jiang ◽  
Ge Shi ◽  
Xin Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Size Structure ◽  
Urban Land ◽  
Urban Agglomeration ◽  
Spatial Distance ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
Urban Agglomerations ◽  
Urban Size

The development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is an important national regional development strategy and a strategic engineering development system. In this study, the evolution of urban spatial patterns in the YREB from 1990 to 2010 was mapped using the nighttime stable light (NSL) data, multi-temporal urban land products, and multiple sources of geographic data by using the rank-size distribution and the Gini coefficient method. Through statistical results, we found that urban land takes on the feature of “high in the east and low in the west”. The study area included cities of different development stages and sizes. The nighttime light increased in most cities from 1992 to 2010, and the rate assumed an obvious growth tendency in the three urban agglomerations in the YREB. The results revealed that the urban size distribution of the YREB is relatively dispersed, the speed of urban development is unequal, and the trend of urban size structure shows a decentralized distribution pattern that has continuously strengthened from 1990 to 2010. Affected by factors such as geographical conditions, spatial distance, and development stage, the lower reaches of the Yangtze River have developed rapidly, the upper and middle reaches have developed large cities, and a contiguous development trend is not obvious. The evolution of urban agglomerations in the region presents a variety of spatial development characteristics. Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai have entered a phase of urban continuation, forming a more mature interregional urban agglomeration, while the YREB inland urban agglomerations are in suburbanization and multi-centered urban areas. At this stage, the conditions for the formation of transregional urban agglomerations do not yet exist, and there are many uncertainties in the boundary and spatial structure of each urban agglomeration.

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