Does emission trading system improve the urban land green use efficiency? Empirical evidence from Chinese cities

Maximizing socioeconomic and environmental benefits with minimal investment in urban land resources is a key concern for sustainable urban development. The emission trading system is an important strategy of the Chinese government to control environmental pollution and promote green development, but whether it improves urban land green use efficiency is still unclear. Combining the concept of green development with urban land use efficiency, this paper uses the super-efficiency slack-based measure (SBM) model with undesirable outputs to measure the land green use efficiency of 261 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2017. In addition, the propensity score matching difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) method and the mediating effect model were used to test the impact of the China's emission trading system on urban land green use efficiency and behind the mechanism. According to the findings, China's emission trading system has significantly improved urban land green use efficiency, compared with that in nonpilot cities, urban land green use efficiency in pilot cities has increased by 10.40%. Moreover, the policy effect of the emission trading system is more significant in resource-based cities and cities with a high intensity of environmental regulations. Further mechanism analysis reveals that green technology innovation and industrial structure upgrading are effective transmission mechanisms for China's emissions trading policy to improve urban land green use efficiency. The findings provide policy implications for promoting the sustainable use of urban land resources and advancing the coordinated development of urban socioeconomic and ecological environments.

Regional thermal environment changes: Integration of satellite data and land use/land cover

Land surface temperature (LST) is subject to location and environmental influences, which makes quantification difficult in terms of timeliness. Based on 10-d geostationary satellite LST TCI products, we quantitatively evaluated the thermal environment differentiation of various ground objects in North, South, and Northwest China from 2017 to 2021. We found that the thermal condition index (TCI) in Northwest China decreased, whereas it increased in North and South China. In contrast, Moran's I index increased in Northwest and South China, with strong spatial agglomeration. The TCI for artificial surfaces decreased from North (0.633) to Northwest (0.554) and South China (0.384). The bare land TCI was always the lowest among the land use/land cover (LULC) types in each region. Our results reflect the LULC thermal environment of China against the background of new urbanization and provide theoretical support for scientific planning to improve the ecological environment.

Eco-environmental constraints, economic incentives, and spatiotemporal variations of construction land use efficiency in regional China

Construction land expansion and use efficiency are tied to the promotion of sustainable cities and communities. This article explores how and why the spatiotemporal variation of construction land use efficiency (CLUE) evolved in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), China between 2000 and 2020. Our descriptive results show that county-level regions with higher CLUE are concentrated in major cities in the core YRD, as well as ecologically sensitive regions in the peripheral YRD. Although CLUE improvement in peripheral regions has been more remarkable since the early 2010s, the efficiency gap in construction land use between the core YRD (central cities) and the peripheral YRD (suburban counties) has doubled. The modeling results indicate the temporally and spatially heterogeneous impacts of various factors related to economic incentives and eco-environmental constraints on the uneven CLUE. Economic level and ecological sensitivity are positively associated with regional CLUE. The continuing growth of service industries and the spatial agglomeration of knowledge-intensive and foreign-invested firms are increasingly vital for CLUE improvement in the core YRD, while the prosperity of manufacturing industries is more important for the peripheral YRD. The “crowding out effect” of environmental pollution on CLUE could be proved in the peripheral rather than the core YRD. Our findings suggest that proper policies should be tailored to specific places to coordinate construction land use, economic growth, and eco-environmental sustainability.