ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Land Use Dynamics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1652558
This article is part of the Research TopicMoving Towards Sustainable Development: Exploring the Impact of Land-Use Policies on Land Green Utilization EfficiencyView all 18 articles
Impact of Land Resource Misallocation on Carbon Emission Efficiency: Empirical Evidence from 274 Cities in China
Provisionally accepted
- Graduate School of Management of Technology, Pukyong National University, Busan 48548, Republic of Korea
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With the acceleration of urbanization and the implementation of the "dual carbon" goals, the impact of Land Resource Misallocation (LRM) on Urban Carbon Emission Efficiency (UCEE) has attracted increasing attention. Based on panel data from 274 Chinese cities during the period 2010–2022, we constructed a LRM index and employed a two-way fixed-effects model to empirically analyze the relationship between LRM and UCEE. The results revealed that LRM significantly hindered the improvement of carbon emissions efficiency in cities. The mechanism analysis indicates that this negative effect is primarily transmitted through the obstruction of Industrial Structure Upgrading (ISU) and Green Technological Innovation (GTI). Further, regional heterogeneity tests showed that the suppressive effect was more pronounced in the central and western regions, small- and medium-sized cities, and non-resource-based cities. In terms of policy implications, deepening market-oriented reforms of the land system, optimizing land use structures, reducing administrative intervention in land allocation, and simultaneously promoting industrial upgrading and GTI to enhance UCEE are recommended.
Keywords: Land resource misallocation, Urban carbon emission efficiency, Industrial structure upgrading, Green technological innovation, Panel data analysis
Received: 23 Jun 2025; Accepted: 28 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wen, Lee and Woo. 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: Woon-Seek Lee, Graduate School of Management of Technology, Pukyong National University, Busan 48548, Republic of Korea
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