Temporal and Spatial Differentiations in Environmental Governance

Benhong Peng, Yue Li, Guo Wei and Ehsan Elahi
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Benhong Peng: Research Base of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Theory System and Science, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Yue Li: School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212001, China
Guo Wei: Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, NC 28372, USA
Ehsan Elahi: School of Business, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-14

Abstract: With the general degradation of environmental carrying capacity in recent years, many developing countries are facing with the dual task of economic development and environmental protection. To explore the issue of urban environmental governance, in this research, we establish a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to investigate the environmental governance regarding temporal and spatial efficiency. Further, we deconstruct environmental governance efficiency into comprehensive efficiency, pure technical efficiency, and scale efficiency and develop a Tobit model to analyze the influencing factors affecting urban environmental governance efficiency. In addition, the above DEA, Tobit model, and deconstruction of efficiency have been applied to study environmental governance efficiency for the Yangtze River urban agglomeration. Findings include: (1) The gap in environmental governance efficiency between cities is highly noticeable, as the highest efficiency index is 0.934, the lowest is only 0.246, and the comprehensive efficiency index has fallen sharply from 0.708 to 0.493 in the past 10 years; (2) Environmental governance efficiency is basically driven by technological progress, while the scale efficiency change index is the main driver of the technological progress change index; (3) For environmental governance efficiency, urbanization and capital openness are irrelevant factors, economic level and urban construction are unfavorable factors, and industrial structure and population density are favorable factors. These findings will help urban agglomerations to effectively avoid the adverse effects of environmental governance efficiency in economic development, and achieve a coordinated development of urban construction and environmental governance.

Keywords: Yangtze River urban agglomeration; environmental governance; DEA model; Malmquist; Tobit model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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