Study On Evaluation, Influencing Factors And Convergence Of Regional Eco-efficiency Of China

In today’s world, depletion of resource and environmental degradation havebecome an insurmountable “bottleneck” for economic development. Some time ago,the haze weather, which puzzled most of China, has sounded the alarm to the Chinesepeople, and the Chian’s people have to pay attention to environmental problemscaused by the rapid development of economy. The people have realized that thepower of economic development is not only to pursuit the efficiency of capital andlabor, but also to pursuit the efficiency of resource and environment, and realized thatwe should work hard to achieve coordinated and sustainable development of theeconomy-resource-environment composite system. As the effective measure andmeans of management of the sustainable development, regional eco-efficiency cancomprehensively reflect the coordinated development level of the economy-resource-environment composite system. Therefore, scientific evaluation for the level ofregional eco-efficiency, analysis of its regional difference, study of the effect factorson regional eco-efficiency, analysis of its convergence, is necessary and significantfor China to change the mode of economic development, and to promote thecoordinated and sustainable development of the economy-resources-environmentsystem.In this dissertation, the main research contents include the following fiveaspects:1. Evaluation of the regional eco-efficiency and analysis of its regionaldifferences. Firstly, According to the connotation of eco-efficiency, from two aspectsof ecological inputs and outputs of economy-resources-environment compositesystem, at the same time selecting the area of agricultural land as the land resourceconsumption indicators, the evaluation index system of reginal eco-efficiency wasestablished. And the dissertation has evaluated the level of eco-efficiency of the30provinces in China during the year2005-2011by use of entropy weighting methodand fuzzy subjection function method. Secondly, using two statistical indicators suchas the coefficient of variation and Theil index, the regional differences of the eco-efficiency among the whole nation and among the four sub regions such as ChinaEastern, Northeast, Central, West.2. Analysis of influence factors. The first part is the analysis of regionalecological efficiency of spatial effect. By means of the global spatial autocorrelationtest and local spatial autocorrelation test, the spatial dependence, spatial clusterstructure and space-time transition path of ecological efficiency were studied; Thesecond part is the theoretical analysis of influencing factors on regional eco-efficiency.Based on the literature analysis, the influence mechanism of the six aspects, such asthe level of economic development, industrial structure, human capital, foreigncapital utilization, environmental policy,scientific technological strength,on theregional ecological efficiency was researched. The last part is the empirical analysisof influencing factors on regional eco-efficiency. Because of the existence of spatialautocorrelation of regional ecological efficiency, the statistical hypothesis of thetraditional measurement method does not hold, so a spatial econometric model basedon panel data was established to make the empirical analysis of influencing factors ofregional eco-efficiency. Particularly, The hypothesis of the “U” curve among theeco-efficiency and the level of the economic development was proposed, and thehypothesis was empirically tested by use of spatial econometric model based on thepanel data during2005-2011of30provinces of China. At the same time, thisdissertation made comparative analysis of the association between three industriesand regional ecological efficiency respectively.3. Convergence analysis. The ideas and methods of the convergence hypothesisof the endogenous growth theory is applied to the analysis of ecological efficiencyregional differences. Using the panel data model, this dissertation conducted anempirical study on the convergence of regional ecological efficiency difference inChina. Firstly, the convergence of regional ecological efficiency level in China andin the four sub regions-the East, the Central, the West and the Northeast was studied;Then, by the method of panel data model, the dissertation has made the absolute βconvergence test on regional ecological efficiency differences. Finally, in the study ofconditional β convergence of regional eco-efficiency, this paper uses the method ofpanel data focused on the six impact factors of conditional β convergence, such as the level of economic development, industrial structure, human capital, foreign capitalutilization, environmental policy, scientific and technological strength.4. Study on the regional industrial eco-efficiency. Firstly，by distinguishinggeneration and emissions of pollutants，industrial eco-efficiency was decomposed intosource-reduction efficiency and end-pipe-treatment efficiency to construct theevaluation model of industrial eco-efficiency. Then，the model was applied toevaluate the industrial eco-efficiency of30provinces in China during the year of2005to2010. Secondly，using the panel data analysis model，the impact of the fourinfluencing factors，including industrial structure，introduction of foreign investment，R&D investment and industrial pollution treatment investment，on source-reductionefficiency and end-pipe-treatment efficiency was analyzed.5. Research on promotion strategy of regional eco-efficiency. From the sixaspects,such as the level of economic development, industrial structure, humancapital, foreign capital utilization, environmental policy,scientific technologicalstrength, which have an impact on the level of eco-efficiency and its conditional βconvergence, some promotion strategies of eco-efficiency were put forward.The main creative points are in the following three aspects:1. Using the entropy method and the weighted fuzzy membership functionmethod, the comprehensive evaluation model was established and the eco-efficiencyof30provincial regions during the year2005-2011was evaluated; Decomposingindustrial eco-efficiency into source-reduction efficiency and end-pipe-treatmentefficiency, by use of The coupling coordination degree model, this dissertationevaluate the industrial eco-efficiency of30provinces in China during the year of2005to2010, which enhance the explanation ability of the evaluation index ofecological efficiency. The influencing factors of ource-reduction efficiency andend-pipe-treatment efficiency were studied originally.2. The spatial effects of regional eco-efficiency and its spatial structure ofcluster were studied, and the spatial econometric theory and method was used toanalyze the influencing factors of regional ecological efficiency. The traditionalrelated research, assuming that each region are independent of each other, ignore thepossible interactions between regions in geographic space. This dissertation extends the existing econometric model of eco-efficiency in methodology. The “U”curvehypothesis of regional eco-efficiency was put forward, and by use of spatialeconometric model, this dissertation made empirical test on the “U”curve.3. The ideas and methods of the convergence hypothesis of the endogenousgrowth theory was applied to the analysis of ecological efficiency regional differences.Using the panel data model, the dissertation made an empirical study on theconvergence of regional eco-efficiency difference in China, which broadens theperspective of study on regional eco-efficiency and enriches the content of the studyof regional ecological efficiency.