ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Land Use Dynamics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1577863
This article is part of the Research TopicMoving Towards Sustainable Development: Exploring the Impact of Land-Use Policies on Land Green Utilization EfficiencyView all 10 articles
Regional differences and convergence of land use efficiency towards carbon neutrality in China's Yangtze River Economic Belt
Provisionally accepted
Kang Wang1,2
Jining Zhang3*- 1ZJU-STEC Urban Development and Planning Innovation Joint Research Center, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
- 2China Eco-city Academy Co., Ltd., Tianjin, China
- 3Urban Mobility Institute, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
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Beyond traditional carbon reduction approaches, vegetation carbon sinks play a critical role in advancing carbon-neutral urban development. This study refines the evaluation framework for land use efficiency (LUE) by incorporating regional carbon balance, and applies a global super-efficiency epsilon-based measure (EBM) model to assess LUE in 69 cities across the urban agglomerations of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2005 to 2020. To examine regional disparities, the Dagum Gini coefficient and kernel density estimation are utilized, while spatial convergence models are employed to explore the dynamic evolution of LUE. The results reveal a U-shaped temporal trend in LUE across the YREB, alongside significant spatial heterogeneity among agglomerations. Interregional disparities and transvariation intensity are the main contributors to spatial differences, whereas intra-regional disparities have narrowed over time, particularly in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River-with the exception of the Chengdu-Chongqing region. Spatial convergence analysis further indicates significant absolute and conditional convergence within each agglomeration. These findings suggest that policy efforts to enhance LUE in the YREB should be tailored to the specific regional contexts of economic development, industrial structure, fiscal capacity, and business environment.
Keywords: Land use efficiency, carbon neutrality, carbon sinks, regional differences, spatial convergence 1
Received: 16 Feb 2025; Accepted: 21 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jining Zhang, Urban Mobility Institute, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
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