Evaluation of Regional Carrying Capacity under Economic-Social-Resource-Environment Complex System: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt

Abstract

As a rigid constraint of the scale and speed of regional economic-social development, carrying capacity is an endogenous variable of regional sustainable development potential. Concepts such as ecological footprint and virtual water have been introduced into the research field of carrying capacity, but dynamic and comprehensive problems in carrying capacity have not been effectively solved. This paper attempts to overcome these limitations by taking the regional factor aggregation degree as the weight and the regional green GDP as the carrying object. Based on the economic-social supplying force, resource supporting force, and environmental constraint force, from the perspective of comprehensive factors assessment, we have constructed an evaluation system of regional carrying capacity index, including mineral, water, and bioecological resources, as well as labor and other factors, and evaluated the regional carrying capacity of 11 provinces and cities along the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The results indicate that (1) the supporting force of the resource subsystem becomes the most critical factor affecting the carrying capacity of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the cross-regional flow potential of resource factors increases the regional carrying capacity threshold. (2) The regional carrying capacity, economic-social, resource and environmental subsystems of the Yangtze River Economic Belt are steadily improving, and the overall trend is positive. The quantified dynamic evaluation of regional economic-social, resource and environmental carrying capacity provides a theoretical support for the construction of the Yangtze River Economic Belt eco-priority green development demonstration area.

Green Development Performance Evaluation Based on Dual Perspectives of Level and Efficiency: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

“…The green development level integrates the sustainability of the three subsystems of economy, society, and ecological environment. Based on the above analysis and existing studies [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 23 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ], we constructed an evaluation index system of the green development level of cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt based on data availability, with the green development level as the target layer and growth quality, industrial development, resource utilization, environmental carrying capacity, environmental governance, and green life as the guideline layer, as shown in Table 1 .…”

“…To answer the above questions, based on data availability and established studies [ 7 , 8 , 9 ], we took 107 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt as research objects, systematically composed the theoretical framework of green development; constructed green development performance evaluation index systems based on two aspects, namely level and efficiency; and measured the green development performance from 2004 to 2017 using entropy weight TOPSIS and the super-efficiency EBM model. The spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of urban green development performance were analyzed with ESDA methods, and the mechanism of the influencing factors was explored with GD and econometric models.…”

Study of Township Construction Land Carrying Capacity and Spatial Pattern Matching in Loess Plateau Hilly and Gully Region: A Case of Xifeng in China

“…Whether the land can be developed into construction land is constrained by various factors. The paper takes the “double evaluation” technical guideline as the fundamental basis, based on relevant researches [ 40 , 54 ]. A total of 10 single elements were selected from the three aspects involving the ecological protection, natural environment, and social economy, constructing an evaluation index system combining with reality of research area, according to the degree of the constraint of each factor on land development and utilization, which were divided into the strongly binding indicators and the less strongly binding indicators.…”

“…The scale mainly involves watershed [ 31 , 32 ], provinces [ 33 ], and counties [ 34 ]. In China, the content primarily aims at the definition of concept connotation [ 35 ], the analysis of regional dynamic evolution [ 36 , 37 , 38 ], and the diagnosis of influencing factors [ 39 , 40 ]; the methods mainly include the evaluation of ecological sensitivity [ 41 ], the projection pursuit model [ 42 , 43 ], the improved ecological footprint model [ 44 , 45 ], the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method [ 46 ], and the TOPSIS model [ 47 , 48 ]; the scale principally includes large and medium-sized urban agglomeration [ 49 , 50 ], central cities [ 51 ], and typical functional area [ 52 ]. In summary, contents have shifted from a single element-oriented evaluation to a multi-objective and multi-angle comprehensive research.…”

Evaluating civil aviation airport competitiveness in the Yangtze River Economic Belt of China: A lens of spatial-temporal evolution

“…The airport competitiveness evaluation facilitates optimizing the spatial layout of airport clusters in YREB (Zhang et al, 2022). Previous studies on evaluating airport competitiveness have mostly been conducted from a global, national, or single airport perspective (Zeng et al, 2012;Cui et al, 2013;Jiang et al, 2013;Spaina et al, 2014;Ishizuka, 2014;Cui et al, 2017;Tang and Li, 2019;Wei et al, 2019;Choi, 2020;Liang et al, 2020;Moura et al, 2020;Qin, 2020;He et al, 2021).…”