Study On The Impact Of Urbanization On Carbon Emission Efficiency In The Yangtze River Delta From The Perspective Of High-quality Development

At present,global climate change is experiencing severe challenges,and the issue of carbon emissions is constantly receiving attention from governments.As the engine of China’s economic development,the Yangtze River Delta should be more responsible in addressing climate change.Meanwhile,China has entered the stage of high-quality development,and the urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta region has entered a critical period of rapid development,with the urbanization rate of Shanghai’s resident population approaching 90% in2020,and urbanization will affect regional carbon emission efficiency through a variety of paths.Therefore,studying the impact of urbanization on carbon emission efficiency and its mechanism from the perspective of high-quality development not only helps to ensure the stable economic growth of the Yangtze River Delta,but also helps to explore the road of highquality development of urbanization,and has important theoretical and practical significance for achieving the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction as early as possible.In order to study the relationship between urbanization and carbon emission efficiency from the perspective of high-quality development,this study selected data from 26 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region from 2003 to 2020,and constructed a comprehensive index of production urbanization,ecological urbanization,living urbanization and urbanization by entropy method.It is found that most cities in Jiangsu Province have significant advantages in production urbanization and living urbanization,while they are slightly behind Zhejiang Province in ecological urbanization.Central cities such as Shanghai,Nanjing,Suzhou and Hangzhou have higher urbanization levels in all aspects,but there are also some cities with low urbanization levels but faster development,such as Chuzhou and Wuhu.After that,the carbon emission efficiency was measured by the minimum distance method to the strongest effective frontier,and the trend of carbon emission efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta region from 2003 to 2020 was analyzed by using Dagum Gini coefficient,kernel density diagram and Markov transfer probability matrix,and it was found that the overall difference of carbon emission efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta region is small,showing a "risingdeclining-rising The trend of "rising-declining-rising" was found.The difference between cities in Anhui Province is large,and the non-equilibrium phenomenon between cities is severe,and cities with low and medium-low levels are likely to fall into the "poverty trap".Based on this feature,this study constructs a spatial Durbin model to investigate the relationship between urbanization and carbon emission efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta from the perspective of high-quality development through LM,LR,and Hausman tests.The empirical results show that the improvement of ecological urbanization,production urbanization,and living urbanization levels,as well as industrial structure optimization and openness to the outside world,have significant positive direct effects on carbon emission efficiency.Second,stability tests are conducted by replacing the weight matrix,replacing the core explanatory variables,and replacing the regression method,and the results all indicate that the empirical results are robust.Finally,the heterogeneity test concludes that the effect of urbanization on carbon emission efficiency is different among the three provinces in the Yangtze River Delta region,among which,the effect of Jiangsu province is not significant.Therefore,a series of measures should be taken in the Yangtze River Delta region to actively promote the high-quality development of urbanization and improve the regional carbon emission efficiency.First,the Yangtze River Delta region should actively promote industrial structure upgrading,reduce the proportion of high pollution and high energy consumption industries by optimizing and adjusting the industrial structure,increase support for clean energy and environmental protection industries,and promote economic transformation and upgrading in the direction of low-carbon,green and recycling.Second,it should actively carry out cooperation with other countries and regions and open up to the outside world with high quality.Third,in terms of energy restructuring,the Yangtze River Delta region should accelerate the restructuring of traditional energy sources and promote energy diversification.Fourth,green technologies in urbanization planning and construction should be strengthened.Fifth,the Yangtze River Delta region should play the role of public finance expenditure guidance,increase investment in environmental protection and energy fields,and guide and support the development of new industries.