The Impact of Environmental Conditions on Urban Eco-Sustainable Total Factor Productivity: A Case Study of 21 Cities in Guangdong Province, China

Abstract

Environmental protection has attracted much attention. This study first describes the status of the ecological environment and then uses data envelopment analysis and the system the system generalized method of moments (GMM) model to study the relationship between the environmental status and ecological sustainable total factor productivity (ESTFP) in 21 prefecture-level cities of Guangdong Province. The main conclusions of this study are as follows. (1) The ecological index (EI), which reflects the ecological environment, shows a general trend of first decreasing and then rising. The average EI value decreased from 80.95 in 2008 to 68.71 in 2011 and then gradually increased to 74.76 in 2017. (2) The ecological sustainable total factor productivity (ESTFP = 0.960), including the two additional dimensions of the urban resource consumption index (URCI) and urban pollution discharge index (UPDI), is better than the traditional total factor productivity (TFP = 0.954). (3) The EI has a highly significant positive promoting effect on ESTFP at a significance level of 1%. The methods and results from this research provide an important scientific reference for the research on urban production efficiency and sustainable urban development in China.

Temporal–Spatial Evolution and Influencing Factors of Coordinated Development of the Population, Resources, Economy and Environment (PREE) System: Evidence from 31 Provinces in China

“…The coordination level of China’s provincial PREE system is affected by many factors. Based on existing research works, after statistically studying the relevant literature on factors affecting sustainable development, combined with the development characteristics of each subsystem, we analyzed seven aspects: population structure [ 38 ], population quality, resource utilization [ 39 ], resource conditions [ 40 ], economic level, economic structure [ 41 ] and environmental protection construction [ 42 ]. To perform the analyses, we considered seven explanatory variables: per capita GDP (GDP), proportion of tertiary industry GDP to total GDP (TI), proportion of environmental pollution control investment to total GDP (EP), forest coverage rate (FC), per capita energy production (EPC), grain output per unit (GY), proportion of urban population (UP) and population with college degree or above (PC).Variable descriptive statistics are shown in Table 5 .…”

A Study on the Changes of Green Total Factor Productivity in Chinese Cities under Resource and Environmental Constraints

“…However, the literature on GTFP at the city level in China, considering resource and environmental cost constraints, remains limited. Only a few scholars have undertaken studies focusing on selected Chinese cities, such as smart cities and low-carbon cities [20,21]. This gap in the literature emphasizes the need for further research at the city level, particularly under the context of resource and environmental considerations.…”

Sustainable Human Habitats Development

“…The city's situation was such that 73% of its inhabitants were dissatisfied with life in the city, and they called the city with names like crowded and dirty (Figure 4). Following the upsurge of discontent, the municipality approved the following with the help of preliminary specialists (Yu & Zhao, 2020): 1. Structuring solid foundation for sustainable urban development 2.…”