Study on spatial-temporal characteristics and influencing factors of urban environmental resource efficiency in the Yangtze River Basin of China

Abstract

There is a close relationship between environmental resource efficiency and the high-quality development of the river basin economy. Improving urban environmental resource efficiency is of great significance to the high-quality development of the river basin. Based on the environmental panel data of cities in the Yangtze River Basin from 2004 to 2020, this paper applies the DEA-Malmquist index model to explore the static characteristics and dynamic changes in the overall environmental resource efficiency of cities in the Yangtze River Basin. Then, the spatial and temporal aspects of the environment are discussed by combining the kernel density function method. The Tobit regression model is used to analyze the factors affecting the environmental resource efficiency of cities in the Yangtze River Basin and its importance. Finally, the grey prediction model is utilized to predict the undesirable output data of cities in the Yangtze River Basin from 2023 to 2025. The results show that the overall urban environmental resource efficiency level in the Yangtze River Basin is high. However, the number of cities that achieve DEA efficiency is less than that of non-DEA efficient cities. The Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of cities shows a “high-low-high” trend, and the technical efficiency change (Effch) and pure technical efficiency change (Pech) have an improvement trend. Industrial structure, regional factors, and openness are positively correlated with environmental resource efficiency, during the economic scale and environmental governance level negatively moderate environmental resource efficiency. The forecast results show that the undesired output of cities in the Yangtze River Basin has been somewhat controlled.