Borrowing Size and Urban Green Development Efficiency in the City Network of China: Impact Measures and Size Thresholds

Abstract

Cities enhance the efficiency of green development among themselves through their borrowing population, economic activities density and advanced functions, but the positive green effect of the borrowing size is affected by the city size. Using panel data of 280 prefecture-level cities in China for the period 2009–2019, this paper measures the borrowing size in three dimensions, namely the borrowing population size, borrowing economic activity density and borrowing advanced functions, and uses the super efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM) model, including non-desired outputs, to measure the urban green development efficiency. After that, this paper empirically examines the effect of the borrowing size on the urban green development efficiency in the Chinese urban network using a double-fixed-effect model. A panel threshold regression with city size as the threshold variable is conducted to evaluate the nonlinear relationship quantitatively between the borrowing size and urban green development efficiency. The results show that all three dimensions of the borrowing size have positive effects on the urban green development efficiency. There is a significant double-threshold effect between the borrowing size and urban green development efficiency; under the threshold of the city size, there is a U-shaped relationship between the borrowing population size, borrowing advanced functions and urban green development efficiency, whereas there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the borrowing economic activity density and urban green development efficiency. Accordingly, this paper argues that government should pay attention to the role of the borrowing size in promoting urban green development efficiency and reasonably expand the city size.

Unveiling the Spatio-Temporal Evolution and Key Drivers for Urban Green High-Quality Development: A Comparative Analysis of China’s Five Major Urban Agglomerations

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Impact of Innovative City Construction on Green Growth Evidence from China's Innovative Pilot Cities

“…The effect is not significant in small and large cities. This may be due to the fact that for small cities, with their low level of technology and inadequate infrastructure, the investment required for green growth is greater than the benefits it brings, while for large cities, "urban diseases" caused by excessive city size and concentration of various populations can lead to a decrease in the efficiency of urban governance, thus affecting green growth [9].…”

Research on the Temporal and Spatial Evolution Characteristics of the Ecological Level of Urban Production Space: A Case Study of the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River, China

“…At the present, there are abundant studies related to PS or ecologicalization, such as the identification of PLE [15], grain production space reconstruction [17], production space overheating forecast [18], ecological economics theory and model [19][20][21], ecological engineering [22], enterprise eco-development [23], industry ecologicalization [24,25] or green development [26], infrastructure and green cities [27][28][29], urban development and regional green development [30,31], urban green space [32][33][34][35], urban green development [36][37][38]. Among them, the urban green development is more closely related to the ecologicalization of production space (EPS) or ELPS, such as urban green development level [39,40], urban green development performance [41], influencing factors of urban green development [42][43][44], urban green development transformation [45]. However, the focus is on the city as a singular entity, and the indicators do not fully account for the influence of its size.…”