Urban Land Use Efficiency under Resource-Based Economic Transformation—A Case Study of Shanxi Province

Abstract

Shanxi, one of China’s provinces, has been approved by the State Council as the only state-level comprehensive reform zone for resource-based economic transformation in 2010. Consequently, the implementation of National Resource-based Cities Sustainable Development Planning (2013–2020) and The State Council on Central and Western Regions Undertaking of Industrial Transformation Guide were also introduced. As a result, many agricultural lands were urbanized. The question is whether the transformed land was used efficiently. Existing research is limited regarding the impact of the government-backed transformation of the resource-based economy, industrial restructuring, and urbanization on land use efficiency. This research investigates urban land use efficiency under the government-backed resource-based economy transformation using the Bootstrap-DEA and Bootstrap-Malmquist methods. The land use efficiency and land productivity indexes were produced. Based on the empirical study of 11 prefectural cities, the results suggest that the level of economic development and industrial upgrading are the main determinants of land use efficiency. The total land productivity index declined after the economic reform was initiated. The findings imply that the government must enhance monitoring and auditing during policy implementation and evaluate the policy effects after for further improvement. With the scarcity of land resources and urban expansion in many cities worldwide, this research also provides an approach to determining the main determinants of land use efficiency that could guide our understanding of the impact of the future built environment.

The Driving Mechanism of Urban Land Green Use Efficiency in China Based on the EBM Model with Undesirable Outputs and the Spatial Dubin Model

“…In the economic growth-oriented performance appraisal system, local governments mainly formulate land requisition policies to expand urban land areas to alleviate problems, such as the shortage of local financial resources [ 30 ]. Based on Lu et al [ 6 ], Ge et al [ 14 ], Lu et al [ 30 ], Fan et al [ 34 ], Tu et al [ 35 ], and Ge and Liu [ 36 ], the proportion of government expenditure in GDP was selected to measure government regulation.…”

Measurement and Influencing Factors of Low Carbon Urban Land Use Efficiency—Based on Non-Radial Directional Distance Function

“…Non-parametric methods are various data envelopment analysis (DEA) models, specifically those that use a linear combination of existing production units to form a production frontier and then measure efficiency values by comparing the relative distance of each production unit to the production frontier [33].The DEA model has become the main method of efficiency assessment and has been perfected continuously due to its advantages of not requiring a specific functional form and not requiring access to price information of input and output factors [34]. In addition, research dimensions have become increasingly diverse, ranging from typical cities [35,36] to provincial cities [29,37], to urban agglomerations [38,39], national megacities [40] and other types of spatial scales.…”

Coordinated Relationship between Compactness and Land-Use Efficiency in Shrinking Cities: A Case Study of Northeast China

“…Previous studies gradually enriched and improved the methods of measuring land-use efficiency. Using the entropy value method, data envelopment, and consequent frontier analysis, researchers have thoroughly studied the efficiency of urban, industrial, agricultural, and development zone land [22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. Furthermore, more attention has been paid to interaction mechanisms of land-use efficiency and systems such as urban spatial development, economic development, and urban ecology.…”

“…Land use efficiency refers to an increase in the output of a unit land area related to regional social and economic activities [43]. With reference to the existing studies on the index system of land-use efficiency, we constructed the index system of land-use efficiency in terms of both inputs and outputs [22,25,33,44]. Land, capital, and labor are the most basic input factors of urban land activities.…”