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Spatiotemporal differences in and influencing factors of urban carbon emission efficiency in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt

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Abstract

Improving urban carbon emission efficiency (CEE) is vital to achieving the goal of urban carbon neutrality. However, the synergistic configurational effect of multiple influencing factors on CEE is not clear. Taking the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) as an example, this paper adopts the standard deviation ellipse and Dagum Gini coefficient method to investigate the spatiotemporal differences in urban CEE in the YREB, and using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method, it explores the configurational effect of CEE influencing factors from the system perspective. The main conclusions are as follows: first, the overall level of urban CEE in the YREB is low, with a certain polarization phenomenon. Second, the relative differences in urban CEE in the YREB show a fluctuating upward trend, and the regional differences mainly originate from the overlapping part between regions. Finally, the main CEE influencing factors do not act in isolation, they constitute a complex process of synergistic interaction, with complementary substitution and causal asymmetry.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank AJE (https://www.aje.cn/) for English language editing.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 41771162).

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  1. College of Tourism, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, China

    Zhaofeng Wang

  2. College of Tourism, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha, 410004, China

    Haiqin Shao

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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Methodology, conceptualization, supervision, and funding acquisition were handled by ZW. The first draft of the manuscript was written by HS. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Haiqin Shao.

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Wang, Z., Shao, H. Spatiotemporal differences in and influencing factors of urban carbon emission efficiency in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 121713–121733 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30674-7

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