ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Social Network Analysis of Industrial Interdependence in the Yellow River Basin from a Water Resource Input-Output Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hohai University, Nanjing, China
- 2The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The Yellow River Basin, despite containing only 2% of China's total water resources, sustains a significant proportion of the nation's population and arable land, creating a notable conflict between industrial development and water resource limitations. To understand the interdependencies of water resources across industrial sectors, this study integrates Input-Output Analysis (IOA) with Social Network Analysis (SNA), investigating 42 industrial sectors across nine provinces in the Yellow River Basin during 2012 and 2017. The results reveal the following key insights: (1) The industrial linkage network displays small-world characteristics, with high clustering and short path lengths, but a decreasing overall water-use connectivity and substantial regional disparities; (2) The network's core-periphery structure has evolved, with peripheral regions reducing their dependence on core sectors; (3) By 2017, the 42 sectors can be grouped into eight clusters, with the processing of timber and furniture serving as a cross-cluster bridge, while the construction sector demonstrates a strong driving influence and the Agriculture, Forestry, Animal Husbandry, and Fishery sector exhibits inward-oriented linkages; (4) Core sectors such as Agriculture, Forestry, Animal Husbandry, and Fishery maintained high in-degree connectivity, while sectors like the Manufacture of General Purpose Machinery and Production and Distribution of Tap Water displayed significant increases in out-degree. This study offers valuable insights for optimizing water resource allocation and promoting sustainable economic development in the Yellow River Basin.
Keywords: industrial linkages, Network density, Optimal allocation of water resources, social network analysis, Water resource input-output, YellowRiver Basin
Received: 07 Nov 2025; Accepted: 30 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Wang, Zhang, Jin, Li, Yao and Singh. 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: Baljeet Singh
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.