Abstract
As China’s largest urban agglomeration with rapid growth of economy and population, the development of the Central Plains Urban Agglomeration (CPUA) has been severely restricted by environmental problems. Thus, the green development performance of the CPUA is worth studying. This study used the panel data of 29 cities in the CPUA from 2003 to 2018 based on the Slacks-based Measure and Global Malmquist–Luenberger index to measure the green total factor productivity (GTFP) and its decomposition index of each city. A spatial econometric model was developed to explore the factors affecting the GTFP of the CPUA. The results show that the GTFP of the CPUA had an upward trend in 2003–2018, but the productivity level was still low. There were significant spillover effect in the GTFP among different cities of the CPUA. The results of the spatial measurement model show that technological progress, industrial structure and solid waste environmental regulationhave a significant positive spillover effect on the GTFP. The, fiscal expenditure, and informatization level also have positive impacts on the GTFP. In the future, local government should provide technical and financial support for the development of green industries in the CPUA, and accelerate the construction of environmental protection infrastructures.
Highlights
An urban agglomeration is a center of economic, cultural and industrial activities
From the perspective of influencing factors of green total factor productivity (GTFP) in the Central Plains Urban Agglomeration (CPUA), the results show that technological progress has a significant positive impact on the GTFP, reconfirming the contributions of technological innovation on urban green development (Zhang et al, 2018)
All Based on Slacks-based Measure (SBM) model and Global Malmquist–Luenberger (GML) index, this paper estimated the GTFP of 29 prefecture-level cities in the CPUA from 2003 to 2018
Summary
An urban agglomeration is a center of economic, cultural and industrial activities. The data related to global urban development show that cities accommodate more than 60% of the world population. The excessive utilization of resources and environmental pollution have already handicapped the development of urban agglomerations (Bank, 2017; Lewis, 2018; Li et al, 2019). The emissions of sulfur dioxide, wastewater, smoke, and dust in China rank first in the world, and 90% is generated in cities (National Bureau of Statistics, 2019b). How to reduce pollution and implement green transformation during urbanization is key to realizing the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations by 2030. China has continuously proposed planning for several urban agglomerations with indicators regarding the environment, resource utilization, and industrial structure to cope with urban environmental problems
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