中国城市生态效率的空间收敛性分析:基于地方政府竞争的视角

A Spatial Convergence Analysis of China’s Urban Eco-efficiency: Perspectives based on Local Government Competition

生态环境区域协同治理是促进区域可持续发展的重要途径,而地方政府竞争是中国区域生态环境治理过程中容易被忽视的体制性因素。选取2006–2018年中国278个地级市的面板数据,运用空间收敛回归模型和中介效应模型,从地方政府竞争的角度分析城市生态效率的空间收敛性及其影响机制。结果表明:首先,城市生态效率呈现收敛趋势,空间因素是影响城市生态效率收敛的关键因素;其次,地方政府竞争作为一种制度因素,在促进城市生态效率空间收敛的过程中发挥着重要作用,并且行政距离邻近竞争比地理距离邻近竞争的效应更强,其竞争压力程度每增加1个百分点,城市生态效率就增加0.114个百分点。再次,地方政府竞争导致了严格的环境规制政策,这些规制政策整体上促进了城市生态效率的改善,从而缩小了落后城市与先进城市的差距。最后,地方政府通过环境规制政策对城市生态效率产生异质性影响。具体而言,在地方政府间的竞争压力下,东部和环保重点地区城市的环境规制改善了生态效率,而中部和非环保重点地区城市的效果则相反。本研究的上述结果表明,如果进一步将城市生态效率引入地方官员行政绩效评价指标体系,可以通过生态竞争缩小地区之间的区域差距。

Regional collaborative governance of the ecological environment is an important way to promote the sustainable development of urbanization,and local government competition is a characteristic institutional factor that is often ignored in the process of regional ecological environmental governance in China.This study selected the panel data of 278 prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2018 in China,and used the spatial convergence regression model and the mediation effect model to analyze the spatial convergence of urban eco-efficiency(UEE)and its mechanism from the perspective of local government competition.The results show several empirical patterns.First,the UEE follows a tendency of convergence that narrows the regional gap of urban eco-efficiency,and spatial interaction factors are the keys affecting the convergence of UEE.Second,local government competition,as a characteristic institutional factor,plays an important role in promoting the spatial convergence of UEE,and the effect of administrative distance proximity competition is stronger than that of geographical distance proximity competition.The UEE increases by 0.114 percentage points when its degree of competitive pressure increases by 1 percentage point.Third,the competitive pressure leads to strict environmental regulation policies,which generally improve UEE and thus narrow its gap with advanced cities.Finally,local government competition has heterogeneous effects on urban eco-efficiency.Specifically,under the pressure of local government competition,the environmental regulations improve the UEE in the east and key environmental protection cities,while the central and non-key environmental protection cities experience the opposite effect.The results of this study suggest that if UEE is further introduced into the administrative performance evaluation index systems of local officials,the regional gap of environmental and economic development could be narrowed through ecological competition.