Abstract
China’s provinces’ development conditions, levels, and models are quite different. Indeed, the contradictions in development are becoming increasingly prominent, and the task of sustainable development is becoming increasingly arduous. The difference in the coordination degree of the development of the economy, sci-technology, ecology, resources, and society (ESERS), and the influencing factors among the research areas have become the most concerned scientific proposition of regional sustainable development. This paper measures the ESERS coupling and coordinated development relationship among the five development levels of China’s provinces on the coupling coordination model. The spatial autoregressive (SAR) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models are used to capture the spatial correlation and spatial heterogeneity of the sustainable and coordinated development of various districts in China. The main research conclusions are as follows: (1) the coupling coordination relationship of different regions in China remained at the mild and moderate maladjusted recession stage. In each of the five dimensions (ESERS), the coupling coordination relationship is relatively weak. (2) In terms of temporal distribution, among the four geographical regions of China, except the northeast, the development of ESERS in the eastern, central, and western regions is shifting to a coordinated balance. In terms of spatial distribution, the unbalanced development of ESERS is mainly concentrated in the northeast and part of the western regions. (3) The backward industrial structure is the main reason leading to the unbalanced development of ESERS in China, while the degree of opening up, eco-environmental governance ability, and education investment intensity are the critical factors leading to the development differentiation of ESERS in different regions of China. Overall optimization of industrial structure is the best way to improve the balance of the overall development of ESERS in China, and strengthening human ecology and international construction is the more effective way to narrow the development differences of regional ESERS.
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The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Xiao-yu Liu: conceptualizationa and writing—review and editing. Yun Xin: conceptualization, methodology, software, data curation, and writing—original draft preparation.
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Liu, X., Xin, Y. Exploring the characteristics and driving factors of coupling coordination of regional sustainable development: evidence from China’s 31 provinces. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 71075–71099 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20792-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20792-z