Measurement And Influencing Factors Analysis Of Eco-Efficiency In China Under The "Dual-Carbon" Target

As one of the largest carbon emitters,coal remains the dominant primary energy source in China’s rapid economic development.Achieving a long-term cap on carbon emissions will be difficult,but achieving carbon neutrality will be an even greater challenge.Therefore,a green development path must be followed in the future to achieve harmonized and sustainable development of the economy,resources and the environment,and China must achieve a low-carbon transition and improve eco-efficiency in line with the "double carbon" target.This paper summarises and synthesises a large body of domestic and international literature to provide a comprehensive assessment of China’s eco-efficiency performance based on the views of a wide range of researchers.Considering the shortcomings of traditional DEA models,this paper adopts a super-efficient SBM model with non-desired outputs to estimate eco-efficiency in 30 Chinese provinces,establishes an evaluation index system covering various aspects such as economy,capital,labour,energy and pollutant emissions,and explores the driving mechanism of the dynamic evolution of total factor productivity and its decomposition index through the GML index.The four major regions of China,namely the east,west,central and northeast,were also decomposed to examine their eco-efficiency levels and development policies,and a comparative analysis was conducted.The Moran index is then used to diagnose the global and local spatial autocorrelation of eco-efficiency in China and to investigate the characteristics of its spatial distribution and development process.Finally,a spatial autoregressive model is used to investigate the impact of six key factors on China’s eco-efficiency,including the level of carbon dioxide emissions,the level of economic development,industrial structure,the level of urbanisation,the strength of environmental protection and the use of foreign investment,and to draw corresponding conclusions and recommendations.Combined with the empirical results in the full text,some key conclusions can be drawn: 1)China’s overall eco-efficiency level is low,and in terms of trend,the annual average value is fluctuating upwards,but has not yet achieved a steady rise,but has been on a downward trend in recent years.By region,the eastern region has the highest eco-efficiency,the central and western regions have similar average efficiency values,the central region has a slightly lower average efficiency value than the western region,and the northeastern region has the lowest average efficiency value.(2)The annual average value of the GML index for China as a whole during the study period was 1.039,indicating that China’s overall eco-efficiency was improving,with an average annual growth rate of 3.9%.The overall eco-efficiency of all regions is on an upward trend.Decomposing the GML index for each region shows that in the four major regions,the improvement in overall eco-efficiency is mainly due to technological progress.(3)There is a positive spatial correlation and some spatial agglomeration between the eco-efficiency of the Chinese provinces.Analysis of the local Moran index shows that there is spatial correlation and spatial dependence between similar levels of eco-efficiency at the local level in China,with provinces mainly distributed in the low-value-low-value agglomeration and high-value-high-value agglomeration areas,gradually increasing in the high-value-high-value agglomeration areas and concentrating on the eastern coast.(4)The level of economic development has a positive and favourable impact on the eco-efficiency of the region and surrounding areas;the increase in per capita CO2 emissions and the increase in the proportion of the secondary sector has a negative disincentive effect on the eco-efficiency of the region and surrounding areas;the strengthening of environmental protection can improve the local eco-efficiency,but its spatial spillover effect is not obvious.In terms of coefficients,an increase in the level of urbanisation alone may improve eco-efficiency to some extent,while the use of foreign investment may reduce eco-efficiency.Finally,the results of the influencing factors are combined with suggestions to strengthen regional exchange and cooperation,promote industrial optimization and upgrading,improve the quality of foreign investment introduction,strengthen management innovation and accelerate low-carbon transformation.