Agricultural water utilization efficiency (AWUE) reflects the rational utilization of water resources in agricultural production. Improving AWUE is important for both improving the levels of agricultural production and reducing consumption of water resources, and it is significant to explore the spatial differences between different cities and regions and the various factors related to AWUE, both theoretically and practically. The AWUE of totally 281 cities at the prefecture level or above in China between 2003 and 2018 was evaluated using the super-efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM). The spatial differences in AWUE were simulated by exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), and the various factors affecting AWUE were simulated using the graphical statistical tool, Geodetector. The results of this study are as follows: (1) The mean value of AWUE across the country was merely 0.23 when it registered a record high in 2018, indicating that the AWUE in China was low; (2) AWUE showed significant spatial differences judging from the results of ESDA, and the low-low type was the principal spatial type, which was distributed mainly in the North China Plain and the Loess Plateau; and (3) agricultural technology was the main factor affecting AWUE.
Investigating urban green innovation efficiency (UGIE) is imperative because it is correlated with the development of an ecological civilization and an innovative country. Spatiotemporal evolution and influencing factors of UGIE are two important scientific problems that are worth exploring. This study presents an indicator system for UGIE that includes input, expected output, and unexpected output, and employs a super-efficiency slacks-based measure (super-SBM) to calculate UGIE in 284 cities at or above the prefecture level in China from 2005 to 2020. Then, we adopted spatial auto-correlation to identify its spatial differences among these cities and Geodetector to evaluate its influencing factors. The results are as follows: (1) The overall UGIE tended to rise, except in northeastern China, megacities, and super large-sized cities. (2) The UGIE of Chinese cities exhibited remarkable spatial differences and auto-correlation, and the “low-low” type enjoyed the most local spatial auto-correlations. (3) Sociocultural factors represented by the number of collections in public libraries became the most important factors affecting the UGIE in China.
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