Industrial ecological efficiency of cities in the Yellow River Basin in the background of China’s economic transformation: spatial-temporal characteristics and influencing factors

Abstract

At present, China's economic development has entered a "new normal." Exploring Industrial ecological efficiency (IEE) in the background of economic transformation is of great significance to promote China's industrial transformation and upgrading and achieving high-quality economic development. Based on the Super-Efficiency DEA model, this study evaluated the IEE of cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2008 to 2017. Exploratory spatial data analysis methods were used to explore the spatial-temporal evolutionary characteristics, and a panel regression model was established to explore the influencing factors of IEE. The research results showed that: The IEE in the Yellow River Basin exhibited an elongated S-shaped evolutionary trend from 2008 to 2017, and the mean IEE of cities presented a trend whereby Yellow River Basin's regions could be ranked in the following order: lower reaches > middle reaches > upper reaches. There was significant spatial autocorrelation of the IEE in the Yellow River Basin, and the hot and cold spots showed an obvious "spatial clubs" phenomenon. The results of panel regression show that the influence factors of IEE in the Yellow River Basin showed spatial heterogeneity in their effect.

Environmental Regulation, Financial Pressure and Industrial Ecological Efficiency of Resource-Based Cities in China: Spatiotemporal Characteristics and Impact Mechanism

“…IEE emphasizes maximum industrial economic output with the least resource consumption. Based on existing studies [ 24 , 26 ], and considering the representativeness, scientific value, and data availability of the indicators, this study selected industrial dust emissions, industrial wastewater discharge, and industrial SO 2 emissions as environmental input indicators, and industrial electricity consumption as the resource input indicator. Total industrial output value was chosen as the output indicator.…”

“…This is a common indicator for evaluating the relationship between industrial development and the ecological environment. Recent studies on IEE have been carried out mainly from three aspects: (1) research scale: different studies are carried out at the country [ 3 , 4 , 5 ], region [ 6 , 7 ], city [ 8 , 9 ], or enterprise [ 10 , 11 ] level; (2) research method: common methods include data envelope analysis (DEA) [ 12 , 13 , 14 ], ecological footprint method [ 15 , 16 ], energy analysis [ 17 , 18 , 19 ], and material flow analysis [ 20 , 21 , 22 ] (DEA is the most widely used method since it evaluates the weight of the endogenous indices and has strong objectivity); and (3) influencing factors: econometric models are used to study the influences of economic development [ 23 ], industrial structure [ 24 ], energy structure [ 25 ], and foreign capital utilization [ 26 ] on IEE.…”

What Affects the Economic Resilience of China’s Yellow River Basin Amid Economic Crisis—From the Perspective of Spatial Heterogeneity

“…The Yellow River Basin in China mainly covers eight provinces and regions ( Figure 1 ), including 91 prefecture-level cities [ 43 ]. In 2018, the population of the Yellow River Basin accounted for 23.8% of China, while the GDP accounted for only 20.35% of China, and the economic development was slow.…”

Spatiotemporal Evolution and Influencing Factors of Carbon Emission Efficiency in the Yellow River Basin of China: Comparative Analysis of Resource and Non-Resource-Based Cities

“…At present, scholars have focused on the environmental protection and high-quality development of the YRB in terms of industrial transformation [ 1 , 2 ], water resources utilization [ 3 , 4 ] land use [ 5 , 6 ], and the atmosphere [ 7 , 8 ], the latter focusing on haze pollution and carbon emissions. Carbon emissions research mainly includes total carbon emissions [ 9 ], intensity [ 10 ], structure [ 11 ], efficiency [ 12 ] and other research aspects.…”