Impact of technological innovation and industrial‐structure upgrades on ecological efficiency in China in terms of spatial spillover and the threshold effect

Abstract

In the past 40 years, China's rapid industrialization has resulted in remarkable social progress and regional economic prosperity but also has caused problems, such as excessive resource consumption and environmental pollution. Ecological efficiency is an important indicator of whether economic efficiency and environmental efficiency are balanced. Exploring ecological efficiency is vital for achieving sustainable development, as technological innovation, industrial structure upgrading, and ecological efficiency are probably related. However, there has been little research on the relationships among them. In this study, we used the super‐efficiency slacks‐based model (SBM) involving undesirable output to calculate the ecological efficiency of 30 provinces in China from 2008 to 2017. We found that China's ecological efficiency has risen, fallen, then fluctuated, and that there were significant spatial differences. Then, we used 3 spatial econometric models for comparative analysis, which revealed that the independent effects of technological innovation on ecological efficiency was significant and negative; however, technological innovation demonstrated a strong positive effect in tandem with industrial structure upgrading, and industrial structure always had a positive effect on ecological efficiency. On this basis, we added the cross‐item of technological innovation, and industrial‐structure upgrades had a significant and positive impact on ecological efficiency, which was significantly greater than the independent effect of technological innovation and industrial‐structure upgrades. To explore the mechanism of industrial‐structure upgrading and technological innovation on regional ecological efficiency, we set the first 2 as threshold variables. We found that there is in fact a threshold effect of technological innovation and industrial‐structure upgrading on ecological efficiency due to the mismatch of periods. These results provide a theoretical rationale for China to formulate strategies to improve ecological efficiency. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2021;17:852–865. © 2020 SETAC

Resource Endowment, Industrial Structure, and Green Development of the Yellow River Basin

“…The coefficient of industrial structure advancement is 0.098, which have passed the significance test, there is a positive correlation between industrial structure advancement and GTFP. This is consistent with Meng Huang's [42] research conclusions. The reason for this finding may be that the development of the economy mainly depends on resources and energy consumption because of abundant natural resources in the Yellow River Basin, forming many resource-dependent industries.…”

Spatial-Temporal Evolution and Influencing Factors of Urban Green and Smart Development Level in China: Evidence from 232 Prefecture-Level Cities

“…Moreover, the driving force of smart cities in accelerating economic growth is enhanced steadily with the improvement of financial development and information sharing [ 25 ]. The influence of smart factors on the efficiency and quality of urban development has been furtherly analyzed [ 26 ], among which the urban innovation level, the degree of government intervention, financial development level [ 27 , 28 ], foreign trade [ 29 ], and urbanization have been demonstrated to be conducive to the green economic development, industrial structure [ 30 ], and modernization [ 31 , 32 ]. Additionally, telecommunication construction is supposed to break regional market restrictions and reduce the coordination cost of enterprises, which is crucial to facilitate integrated market construction and improve production efficiency through the scale and intensive economy [ 33 ].…”

Does Technological Innovation Improve the Regional Ecological Efficiency? Empirical Evidence From China

“…China's natural gas, electricity and other energy supply industries have 131 higher ecological efficiency than mining and other industries, The main reason for the 132 high eco-efficiency is that China's oil and gas exploration and production areas are 133 under state control . Scholars also found that the upgrading of 134 industrial structure and educational level generally have a positive impact on ecological 135 efficiency (Han et al, 2021;Huang et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2020;Yasmeen et al, 2020).…”

“…On the relationship between technological innovation and ecological efficiency, scholars' research results are inconsistent. Some scholars believe that technological innovation has a significant negative impact on ecological efficiency, but the interaction between technological innovation and industrial structure can improve regional ecological efficiency (Huang et al, 2020).…”