| With the rapid economic development,the contradiction between China’s economic development and environmental protection has become increasingly prominent,and it has become a consensus to promote regional sustainable development.Since entering the new era,the strategy of regional coordinated development has become one of the major national strategies in the new era.The whole-area integrated development within the province,formed by the interconnected development of modern metropolitan areas,is promoting the region to become an important battlefield to participate in environmental control and cope with global climate change issues.China is shifting from high-speed development to high-quality development.In the context of the "two-carbon" goal and high-quality development,regional development is coordinated to achieve synergies in pollution reduction and carbon reduction.At this time,the exploratory research on the driving mechanism of regional metabolic efficiency not only meets the control requirements of energy conservation and efficiency improvement and environmental pollution reduction under the "two-carbon" goal,but also meets the development requirements of sustainable economic growth.The concept of metabolism originated from the field of biochemistry and was used to reflect the characteristics of organic decomposition and synthesis processes in living cells.As the concept of metabolism extends from the metabolic theory of biochemistry to regions,regional metabolism refers to the exchange of substances,energy,and services between regions and the external environment during a certain period of time,as well as the production,transformation,and consumption process of substances,energy,and services within regions.Regional metabolic efficiency is a quantitative measure of the input and output of material and energy in a region,reflecting the metabolic status of system material and energy and environmental carrying pressure.It is a comprehensive concept of environment,economy,and energy.Taking regional metabolic efficiency and driving force in China as the research object,this study discussed the measurement method and spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of regional metabolic efficiency,as well as the driving path and driving mechanism of regional metabolic efficiency.By imitating the research perspective of biological metabolism,it further revealed the mechanism of population quality,industrial integration and climate change affecting regional metabolic efficiency.Firstly,based on emergy theory and Index-DEA model,regional metabolic characteristics were evaluated from the dimensions of structure Index,function index,efficiency index and characteristic index,and temporal evolution and spatial pattern evolution were analyzed.In addition,the dynamic DEA-Malmquist index of regional metabolic efficiency was measured for the inflection point years of regional metabolic efficiency,so as to reveal the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics and prominent problems of regional metabolic efficiency.Secondly,the conceptual framework of the driving mechanism of regional metabolic efficiency is clarified,and three questions are expounded,namely,why the driving mechanism should be studied from this perspective,why the three main driving forces should be selected,and what the relationship between the three main driving forces is.The theoretical influence paths of population quality,industrial convergence and climate change are analyzed.Thirdly,it measures population quality,industrial integration and driving forces of climate change.The comprehensive evaluation index system of population quality is constructed from four aspects,namely population development index,population structure index,population education and work index and population security index,and the projection pursuit model is used to measure the characteristics of population quality.The evaluation criteria of industrial integration were constructed from four aspects: industrial scale,industrial structure,regional advantage and development potential,and the coupling evaluation model was used to measure the degree of industrial integration.Six climatic factors including temperature,precipitation,air pressure,wind speed,humidity and sunshine were selected as indicators to reflect climate change.Finally,the empirical test of population quality,industry convergence and climate change driving forces are carried out.The Tobit model was used to empirically test the influence of each driving force on regional metabolic efficiency,and multidimensional heterogeneity analysis was conducted.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:From 2003 to 2020,China’s regional metabolic efficiency showed an increasing trend of fluctuation,but after 2012,there were short-term fluctuations and the growth trend gradually slowed down,and the inter-provincial differences of regional metabolic efficiency became smaller and smaller during 2003-2020.Specifically,the metabolic efficiency of the four plate regions changed from a four-step pattern of "West--Central--East--northeast" in 2003 to a three-step pattern of "central,west--East--northeast" in 2020,and the gap between the four steps gradually decreased.In terms of spatial pattern evolution,it shows a gradual shift from the western "monocentric" to the central part,and then to the "multicentric" agglomeration of the four plates.In addition,the dynamic DEA-Malmquist index of regional new-generation efficiency shows that the operation condition of economy-ecosystem gradually deteriorated during 2012-2015,which is a warning for the sustainable development strategy of China today.It is imperative not to sacrifice ecology to achieve economic development.In addition,the empirical results show that population quality,industrial integration and climate change are significant driving forces of regional metabolic efficiency.In terms of population quality driving force,population quality driving force has a significant promoting effect on regional metabolic efficiency in both high quality population areas and general population mass areas,especially in high quality population areas.The population quality index in eastern and western China has a significant positive effect on regional metabolic efficiency,but there is no significant effect in central China.This indicates that for eastern and western China,improving population quality can significantly promote regional metabolic efficiency,while the driving force of population quality in central China is not significant.As for the driving forces of industrial integration,the reason why industrial integration has a significant promoting effect on the improvement of regional metabolic efficiency in China is mainly because industrial integration has a significant promoting effect on the improvement of regional metabolic efficiency in the areas of emerging industrial integration.The driving force of industrial integration has a significant promoting effect on regional metabolic efficiency in the western and northeastern regions,while in the eastern and central regions,the estimated coefficient of the driving force of industrial integration is positive but not significant,indicating that the eastern and central regions should pay more attention to the environmental loss and rational use of resources when promoting the benefits of industrial integration,so as to further realize the balance between the environmental system and the economic system.To better achieve sustainable development;For the driving force of climate change,the improvement of temperature,air pressure,humidity and sunshine can inhibit the regional metabolic efficiency,while the precipitation and wind speed can significantly promote the regional metabolic efficiency.Based on different seasonal perspectives and different toughness perspectives,it is found that the influence of climate change is the largest in spring,followed by winter,and the two major climate change factors,temperature and precipitation,have obvious seasonal differences.The three climatic factors,precipitation,air pressure and sunshine,significantly affected the regional metabolic efficiency in the high-toughness region;the four climatic factors,precipitation,air pressure,humidity and sunshine,significantly affected the regional metabolic efficiency in the medium-toughness region;while the only climatic factor,wind speed,significantly affected the regional metabolic efficiency in the low-toughness region.According to the number of response climate factors,the response level of metabolic efficiency to climate change was classified.In the region of medium toughness,the response level of metabolic efficiency was the strongest,the response level of high toughness was moderate,and the response level of low toughness was the lowest.According to the above research conclusions,from improving the population quality level,strengthen the pollution emission monitoring in the eastern region;Establish a stable and integrated growth mechanism to promote coordinated development of industry and science and technology;Suggestions for improving regional metabolic efficiency were put forward from three aspects: improving regional resilience level and moving towards sustainable climate change adaptation,and the shortcomings of existing studies and future directions for further research were looked forward. |
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