A Spatial-Temporal Approach to Evaluate the Dynamic Evolution of Green Growth in China

• Main Authors: Xiaofei Lv, Xiaoli Lu, Guo Fu, Chunyou Wu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-07-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: green growth; spatial evolution; the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA)
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/7/2341

Green growth, a new growth mode to tackle resource and environment crises, is imperative in light of current environmental crises and resource depletion. Most evaluation strategies of green growth, while emphasizing the time dimension, ignore the spatial association and diffusion. This study provides a measurement framework of green growth with which to select a set of 18 indicators and evaluates the efficiency of green growth in different regions. The coefficient of variation and the regional Gini coefficient were applied to analyze the spatial variation of green growth. The Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) was used to identify the evolution of the geographical agglomeration in 30 administrative regions in mainland China. The results show that China’s green growth capacity is constantly improving, and the gap between regions in this respect is shrinking. The spatial evolution trend of green growth is expanding horizontally from the East to the West and vertically from the central to the southwest and the northwest regions. Green growth in the eastern and central regions is active but poor in the northeast region. Compared with the continuous stability of the 22 provinces, eight provinces exhibited spatial activity and growth spillover, which affected the adjacent regions. Promoting the outflow of capital and technology is key to increasing green growth in the eastern and central region, while increasing investment and introducing technology through policy advantages to promote industrial transformation is an urgent task for the northeast region.