Spatial spillover effects of urbanization on ecosystem services value in Chinese cities

Abstract

Research on the relationship between urbanization and ecosystem services value (ESV) has been a hot topic recently. However, few studies have quantified the effects of neighboring urbanization on local ESV in terms of the spatial interactions of urbanization process. This paper first evaluated ESV at city level based on the adjusted equivalent factors. Then, through the built spatial panel econometric model, spatial spillover effects of land urbanization (LU), population urbanization (PU) and economic urbanization (EU) on ESV were explored with the data for 340 Chinese cities during 2000–2015. Our results indicated that: (1) The evaluated ESV for China in 2015 was 29.12 trillion yuan (at the price of 2000). (2) Only LU exerted significant and robust negative effects on ESV, with a 1.04% decrease in ESV for every 1% increase in LU. (3) Local ESV increased by 0.32% for every 1% increase in neighboring average ESV. (4) According to decomposition analysis, the development of LU and EU in local area could improve neighboring ESV, while PU had negative effects on neighboring ESV. Basing on above evidences, the exploration of the relationship between urbanization and ESV in this study provides important scientific basis for future sustainable urban planning and regional joint governance.

Keywords

• Ecosystem services
• Urbanization effect
• Equivalent factor adjustment
• Spatial panel econometrics
• China