Spatial-temporal evolution and trend prediction of ecological civilization construction efficiency from the perspective of audit

Abstract

Abstract The performance evaluation of ecological civilization construction is an important content of ecological civilization audit. The super-efficiency slacks-based measure model measured inter-provincial ecological civilization construction efficiency based on the panel data of Chinese provinces and cities during 2000–2020. Based on the time series and spatial correlation analyses, the traditional and spatial Markov probability transfer matrixes were constructed to explore the spatial and temporal dynamic evolution characteristics of China’s ecological civilization construction efficiency and predict its long-term trend. The study revealed that China’s ecological civilization construction efficiency has a “bimodal” distribution with a stable increase in fluctuation. The gap between the peak heights is small; however, the overall ecological civilization construction efficiency is low. We also revealed that from the long-term evolution trend forecast, most provinces and cities gradually shift to higher levels of ecological civilization construction efficiency and gradually evolve into having a gradual increase pattern in the geographical context of low ecological civilization construction efficiency, resulting in the long-term evolution of the stable state performance. In the geographic context of low ecological civilization construction efficiency, the long-term evolution of the stable state is a partial “single-peaked” distribution. Finally, we analyzed the directions for improvement in this study and suggested that inter-regional ecological civilization construction policy connections and the fortification of inter-regional ecological civilization construction cooperation and exchange can effectively improve China’s ecological civilization construction efficiency, narrow the gap between provinces and cities, and promote the construction of ecological civilization.