Factors Driving Coordinated Development of Urban Green Economy: An Empirical Evidence from the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle

Globally, all countries regard the development of economic zones around basins as the focus and main axis of national economic construction. The economic development of basin areas must consider the constraints of environmental protection, which requires local governments to adopt a coordinated development approach to the green economy. The Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle is located in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River Basin and will be built into a growth pole for China’s economic growth. This paper uses the panel data of 16 cities in the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle from 2005 to 2019 and measures the level of coordinated development of the green economy among cities. Using fixed effect regression models, this paper identified the factors driving the coordinated development level of the urban green economy. The results show that (1) the overall trend of coordinated development of green economy in the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle is enhanced; (2) the pulling force includes the similarity of economic agglomeration and regional openness, the resonance force includes the similarity of traffic and industrial structure, the pushing force comes from the central city; (3) in the urban agglomeration with double centers, the cooperation and competition between two “pole” cities may coexist.