How to Evaluate Provincial Ecological Civilization Construction? The Case of Jiangsu Province, China

Abstract

Ecological civilization is a transcendence of industrial civilization. The improvement of China’s ecological civilization system can not only provide developing countries with an empirical reference for ecological civilization construction, but also make a huge contribution to the progress of global ecological civilization. This paper focuses on improving the provincial ecological civilization evaluation system. First, the Provincial Ecological Civilization Construction Evaluation Index System is established according to the Green Development Index System issued by the Chinese government in 2016, and then the applicability of the Spatio-Temporal Factor Analysis (STFA) is verified as the evaluation method of the provincial ecological civilization construction level. Further, taking Jiangsu Province, China as an example, this paper evaluates the level of ecological civilization construction in each city of Jiangsu Province, and analyzes the main factors affecting ecological civilization based on the evaluation results. Finally, according to the relationship between the ecological civilization construction and economic quality of each city, the four-quadrant method is applied to divide Jiangsu Province into four types of regions to help each city position itself in ecological civilization construction. This paper mainly draws the following conclusions: (1) Due to its simple operation and accurate evaluation results, STFA is applicable in evaluating the provincial ecological civilization construction level. (2) Taking Jiangsu Province as an example, it is found that the level of ecological civilization construction in the southwestern region is higher than that of the northeast coastal region in Jiangsu. Three inequality indices are applied to measure the regional inequality of ecological civilization construction among 13 cities, which is relatively high in recent years. (3) By analyzing the results of STFA, it is found that economic quality and natural protection are not only the main factors affecting the ecological civilization construction in Jiangsu province, but also the main reasons for the regional heterogeneity of provincial ecological civilization. (4) For the four types of regions, suggestions are proposed according to the characteristics of each region to help improve the provincial ecological civilization construction level. This paper not only improves China’s ecological civilization construction system, but also provides information for the provincial ecological civilization construction in developing countries.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Regional Ecological Civilization Policy: Evidence from Jiangsu Province, China

“…In the field of economic development, policy objectives have shown significant effectiveness, but policy power, policy feedback, and policy measures have not reached a significant level. Economic development targets have been receiving more attention as the focus of local government performance reviews [ 62 , 63 ]. For example, Du et al [ 63 ] argue that the key to coordinated development is to achieve a win–win situation between economic development and ecological protection.…”

Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Green Development Cooperation Network among Belt and Road Initiative Regions and Countries

“…The index systems are diverse because of the wide range of research themes and scales. Second, relevant studies focus on the urban [26,29] and sub-national scales [30]. In recent years, research on BRI countries has become more common.…”

Spatiotemporal Evolution and Factors Influencing Ecological Civilization Development in Chinese Watersheds

“…Third, from the perspective of ecological civilization research, most scholars have studied the development of ecological civilization at the provincial, municipal, and rural levels [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Fourth, the results of existing studies have shown that the quality of economic development and nature conservation [ 14 , 15 , 16 ], clean energy investment, water supply for urban residents, foreign investment utilization, land resource protection, and population education quality [ 17 ] have significant effects on the level of ecological civilization construction. The results of these studies have shown that the industrial structure and marketization degree, government environmental risk awareness, government green action, residents’ happiness, corporate environmental responsibility, investment in culture and education, green travel and ecological construction, and other factors positively affect the performance of ecological civilization [ 7 ].…”