Spatiotemporal Evolution, Spatial Agglomeration and Convergence of Environmental Governance in China—A Comparative Analysis Based on a Basin Perspective

Mengzhi Xu, Shixin Luan, Xuan Gao and Huachun Wang ()
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Mengzhi Xu: School of Government, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Shixin Luan: School of Government, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Xuan Gao: State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Huachun Wang: School of Government, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: Scientifically measuring the level of environmental governance (EGL) and understanding its spatial convergence has important reference value for ecological governance. In this paper, the global entropy method is applied to measure the EGL of 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2019, which are divided into three major river basins, including the Yellow River, Yangtze River, and Pearl River, to observe the spatial–temporal evolutionary characterization through a standard deviation ellipse model. The coefficient of variation and the spatial econometric model are the tools used to conduct the spatial convergence test. The results are as follows: (1) China’s EGL is low overall, though it is fluctuating upward at low magnitude, and the three major river basins follow the ranking: The Pearl River Basin > The Yangtze River Basin > The Yellow River Basin. (2) Spatially, the distribution pattern of China’s EGL changes from “scattered and sporadic” to “multipolar core”. (3) The center of China’s environmental governance was concentrated in the east from 2007 to 2019, and the EGL in the midstream and downstream regions of the three major river basins increased rapidly. (4) Environmental governance in China has significant absolute and conditional β-convergence characteristics, as do the three major basins, while the ranking of convergence speed remains “Yangtze River Basin > Yellow River Basin > Pearl River Basin”. Of these, economic development accelerated the convergence rate of environmental governance in China and its three major river basins; financial pressure significantly inhibited the convergence of the EGL of the Yellow River Basin. The improvement of the EGL in the Pearl River Basin was also negatively influenced by the industrial structure.

Keywords: environmental governance; spatial convergence; river basins; spatial agglomeration; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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