Study on the Coordination of New Urbanization and Water Ecological Civilization and Its Driving Factors: Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

Abstract

For sustainable development of the world, it is crucial to solve the problems related to water environment pollution, water shortage, and the inefficient utilization of water resources during the process of urbanization in developing countries. At present, scholars mainly focus on the measurement of new urbanization (NU) and the water ecological civilization (WEC) level and the coordination relationship between NU and ecological civilization. However, there have been few studies on the coordination relationship between NU and WEC and its driving factors. We take the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) in China as a case study, construct the indicator system of NU and WEC, analyze the current situation of NU and WEC in the YREB, and study the coordination state of NU and WEC in the YREB from 2011 to 2020 by using a state coordination function. We further examine the factors driving the coordination of NU and WEC by employing a two-way fixed-effects model. The results show the following: (1) The growth rate of NU and WEC in the YREB shows a fluctuating upward trend, where there is significant heterogeneity between the upper reaches, the middle reaches, and the lower reaches of the YREB. (2) The static coordination degree of NU and WEC in the YREB shows a trend of fluctuating upwards and then falling, and the dynamic coordination degree deviated from the coordinated development trajectory from 2018 to 2020. The classification of the static coordination degree of various regions in the YREB gradually becomes obvious with significant spatial aggregation characteristics, and the dynamic coordination degree of various regions has significant heterogeneity. (3) The opening-up degree, foreign direct investment, population growth, and urban–rural income gap are not advantageous to the coordination degree, while the marketization level, industrial structure, and human capital are advantageous to the coordination degree, but the regression coefficients of the latter two are not significant. The regional regression results show that the impacts of driving factors on the coordination degree have obvious heterogeneity. The research results provide a new idea and method that can be used by developing countries similar to the YERB to control water pollution, improve the ecological environment, alleviate water shortages, and improve the level of WEC in the process of NU.

Green Consumption, Environmental Regulation and Carbon Emissions—An Empirical Study Based on a PVAR Model

“…As a new consumption concept, it faces a series of new challenges and problems in practical exploration and theoretical research. Past studies have been conducted from five perspectives: green consumption theory [4][5][6][7], a green consumption model [8][9][10], green consumption marketing strategy [11][12][13], the green consumption attitude-behavior gap [14][15][16], and factors affecting green consumption [17][18][19][20][21].…”

“…We have selected shared bicycles and new energy cars as our indicators since they are novel, and popular, and haven't been covered in any previous research. For the construction of provincial Chinese green consumption index (GCI) systems, the existing literature has mainly focused on three approaches, namely, mixing urban and rural economic indicators [20,21,25,26], constructing urban GCIs using urban economic indicators [27], and using economic indicators to construct rural GCIs [28].…”

“…Regarding the construction of provincial Chinese GCI systems, the existing literature mostly mixes urban and rural economic indicators [20,21,25,26], but China's unique urbanrural dual economic system and the large differences in production and lifestyles between urban and rural areas may lead to weight mismatch and affect the reasonableness of the indicators when the urban and rural areas are mixed to construct GCIs. This may lead to weight mismatch and affect the rationality of the indicators.…”

“…As a result, the majority of the indicators included in this study are from domestic research that has already been done. For example, the proportion of clean energy consumption, Urban heating area, and air quality [19,21,30]. Whether or not it is a green home lifestyle or a green way of traveling, all reflect the connotation of green consumption, which improves the quality of residents' green lifestyles.…”

The Impact of New Urbanization on Water Ecological Civilization: Based on the Empirical Analysis of Prefecture-Level Cities in Jiangxi, China

“…WEC aims to integrate the concept of ecological civilization into all aspects of water resource development-utilization, management, allocation, conservation, and protection-to achieve the intensive, safe, and sustainable use of water resources; support the green development of economy and society; and achieve harmonious coexistence between humankind and water, which is an important part of ecological civilization. Water resource conservation and ecological protection are the top priorities and key to WEC construction [1,2]. At the same time, the current urbanization rate of China is lower than that of developed countries, and the urbanization rate of the household registration population in 2021 was only 46.70%.…”