Performance evaluation, environmental regulation, and urban land green use efficiency: Evidence from China

Abstract

Environmental regulation plays an important role in enhancing urban land green use efficiency (ULGUE), while economic and environmental performance evaluation may also impact ULGUE in the Chinese context. Using data from 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019, this article empirically tests the impacts of performance evaluation and environmental regulation on ULGUE by establishing a two-way fixed-effect model. The results show that environmental regulation has a significant contribution to ULGUE. However, environmental regulation also significantly increase carbon emissions from urban construction land, which is mainly influenced by the Chinese government's performance assessment. Therefore, the effect of performance evaluation is also examined. Economic performance evaluation is detrimental to environmental regulation and ULGUE, while environmental performance evaluation significantly contribute to both. Furthermore, economic performance evaluation and environmental regulation can synergistically promote ULGUE, however, environmental performance evaluation failed to have the same synergistic effect. Notably, when the ratio of economic performance evaluation to environmental performance evaluation was 2:8, performance evaluation and environmental regulation reached the optimal level for promoting ULGUE. Therefore, to improve ULGUE, it is necessary to establish and strengthen the constraint mechanism of environmental regulation on carbon emission from urban construction land. Meanwhile, local governments' performance assessment mechanism must be improved and the ratio of economic to environmental performance evaluation should be reasonably configured.