Yangtze River Delta in China space-time effect research on influencing factors for ecological civilization construction

Abstract

In the strategic context of “vigorously promoting the construction of ecological civilization and following the Chinese modernization road,” it is of theoretical and practical significance to investigate the influencing factors and spatial and temporal effects of the level of ecological civilization construction (ECC) in view of the lack of scientific understanding of the spatial and temporal evolution of ECC. The ECC level of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) territory was assessed from 2010 to 2020 based on four different factors: economy, culture, society, and environment. The Spatial Dubin model, in conjunction with the Hurst index, was used to examine the spatial impact of the ECC level. The results indicate that the YRD’s ECC level exhibits high spatial agglomeration features with rising agglomeration intensity and significant spatial autocorrelation. The degree of ECC in the YRD region has a substantial regional spillover effect. Cities nearby are expected to grow by 0.507% for every 1% increase in the local ECC level. The YRD region showed a high Hurst index of the ECC level; the sustainability sequence accounted for 80.49% of this index, and the Hurst index of the cities in the core portion of the region was generally higher than that of the marginal cities. The two facets of time and space, as well as the spatial spillover and lag impact of ecological civilization formation, should be considered in the future. To support the high-level ECC growth in the entire YRD region, it is vital to increase communication and collaboration between cities in the YRD territory.

Keywords

• Ecological civilization construction level
• Yangtze River Delta
• Spatial Dubin model
• Hurst index
• Spatial spillover effect