Study On The Spatial And Temporal Evolution Characteristics And Influencing Factors Of Carbon Emission Efficiency In The Yellow River Basin

The accelerated urbanization and industrialization in China and the improvement of people’s living standards have led to increasing CO₂emissions.Global warming caused by large greenhouse gas emissions has become an important challenge for the world today.The achievement of China’s double carbon target is closely related to carbon emission reduction,and the key to reduce CO₂emission is to improve the efficiency of CO₂emission.The industrial structure of the Yellow River Basin is dominated by heavy industries,and the large concentration of traditional high-pollution,high-energy-consumption and high-emission industries has led to increased pressure on energy conservation and emission reduction in cities in the basin.Therefore,it is necessary to study the carbon emission efficiency and its influencing factors in the Yellow River Basin,and explore the ways to improve carbon emission efficiency,so as to provide scientific basis for the formulation of government carbon emission reduction policies,which is conducive to the cities to achieve green and low-carbon development.This paper selects the panel data of 99 prefecture-level cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2011 to 2020,and firstly,uses the Super-SBM model to measure their carbon emission efficiency,and analyzes the time-varying characteristics of carbon emission efficiency at the level of the Yellow River Basin in general,three major regions and nine provinces.Then,from the perspective of relative differences,we use the Dagum Gini coefficient and its decomposition method to analyze the overall differences,intra-regional differences,inter-regional differences and their source contribution rates of carbon emission efficiency in the Yellow River Basin;from the perspective of absolute differences,we use the kernel density estimation method to analyze the dynamics of the time-series distribution of carbon emission efficiency in the Yellow River Basin as a whole and in the three major regions to reveal the specific conditions of carbon emission efficiency differences in the Yellow River Basin.Secondly,the exploratory spatio-temporal data analysis method is used to analyze the spatial distribution characteristics,spatial autocorrelation and spatio-temporal leap trends of carbon emission efficiency.Finally,the Tobit model was constructed to investigate the influencing factors of the overall carbon emission efficiency in the Yellow River basin,and to analyze the regional heterogeneity of the influencing factors of carbon emission efficiency in the upper,middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River basin.Conclusions:（1）In terms of temporal characteristics,the overall carbon emission efficiency level in the Yellow River basin shows a fluctuating upward trend,with the highest in the upper reaches,the second highest in the lower reaches and the lowest in the middle reaches.The highest mean carbon emission efficiency level is in Gansu,followed by Shandong and Sichuan,and the lowest is in Qinghai.（2）The overall as well as the intra-regional differences in the upper,middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin show a decreasing trend,the inter-regional differences fluctuate in a gradual decline,and the inter-regional differences are the main source of carbon emission efficiency differences after 2016.The carbon emission efficiency of the Yellow River Basin has non-equilibrium characteristics,and there are obvious differences between the upper,middle and lower reaches.（3）In terms of spatial distribution characteristics,the five types of efficiency zones indicate the evolution from low-level efficiency zones to higher-level efficiency zones,which gradually tend to develop in a balanced manner.Meanwhile,the spatial"high-high"agglomeration and"low-low"agglomeration are accompanied by the evolution of carbon emission efficiency,but the overall spatial stability of cities in the Yellow River Basin is high,and there are more obvious path-dependent characteristics and spatial locking phenomenon.（4）From the regression results of the influencing factors,the influence of industrial agglomeration level on the carbon emission efficiency of the whole Yellow River basin shows a"U"-shaped relationship of decreasing and then increasing,and the level of economic development,information development,human capital,environmental regulation and green ecology significantly promote the improvement of carbon emission efficiency,but the level of urbanization significantly inhibits the improvement of carbon emission efficiency.However,the level of urbanization significantly inhibits the improvement of carbon emission efficiency.These seven influencing factors have obvious regional heterogeneity characteristics.