Spatiotemporal evolution and influencing factors of China’s economic development performance under carbon emission constraints

BACKGROUND: China’s high-quality economic development depends on achieving sustainable economic development, reaching peak carbon emissions, achieving carbon neutrality, and intensifying the development of an industrial and energy structure that saves resources and protects the environment. This study used the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and the Malmquist productivity index to measure the economic development performance of mainland China under carbon emission constraints. Then, it described the spatiotemporal evolution of economic development performance and analyzed its influencing factors using the Tobit model. RESULTS: The results revealed that there were obvious differences in the trends of the static and dynamic performance of economic development. On the one hand, the static performance of economic development exhibited an upward trend from 2008 to 2020. Its distribution characteristics were dominant in the higher and high-level areas. On the other hand, the dynamic performance had a downward trend from 2008 to 2016 and then an upward trend from 2016 to 2020. In most provinces, the dynamic performance was no longer constrained by technological progress but rather by scale efficiency. It was found that the main factors influencing economic development performance were urbanization level, energy efficiency, vegetation coverage, and foreign investment, while other factors had no significant influence. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that China should improve its economic development performance by increasing the use of clean energy, promoting human-centered urbanization, increasing carbon absorption capacity, and absorbing more foreign capital in the future.