Evaluation and influencing factors of green transformation in three major urban agglomerations in China Provisionally Accepted

Xueguang Ma¹ Zhihan Lin^1*

• ¹Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, China

Since the 21st century, the world has increasingly focused on the issue of sustainable development, and the green transformation issues have become a new hot topic worldwide. Urban agglomerations are important connections between urban development and regional coordination, as well as important spatial carriers for economic activities. This article focuses on 48 cities in the three most mature and influential urban agglomerations in China from 2011 to 2019, namely the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, and the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration. The three-stage DEA model and Malmquist index model are used to measure the green transformation efficiency of the three urban agglomerations from both dynamic and static perspectives, and a Tobit regression model is constructed to explore the influencing factors of green transformation efficiency in urban agglomerations. Research has found that: (1) From a static perspective, the overall efficiency of green transformation in the three major urban agglomerations is at a high level, but from a temporal perspective, it shows a downward trend. The Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration is known for its green development, with the highest average efficiency of green transformation, followed by the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration has the lowest level of green transformation; (2) From a dynamic perspective, technological progress is the main driving factor for improving the efficiency of green transformation in the three major urban agglomerations. Therefore, the government should pay special attention to the progressiveness of technology when formulating relevant policies to promote urban green transformation; (3) From the perspective of spatiotemporal differences, there are significant differences in the spatiotemporal characteristics of green transformation among the three major urban agglomerations, and there are significant differences in green transformation strategies among different urban agglomerations. Eliminating environmental factors and random interference is necessary for accurately measuring the efficiency of green transformation in urban agglomerations; (4) From the perspective of influencing factors, factors such as industrial structure upgrading, green innovation level, and environmental regulation intensity jointly affect the efficiency of green transformation in urban agglomerations.