Spatiotemporal heterogeneity and influencing factors on urbanization and eco-environment coupling mechanism in China

High-quality urbanization is the core for realizing human well-beings, for which reason investigating how the relationship evolves between urbanization and eco-environment is of crucial importance. Differing from the rationale of revealing spatial spillover effects using traditional tests, we consider spatial network characteristics to enrich the notion of local coupling and telecoupling from a relational perspective. First, we adopt coupling coordination degree model (CCDM) and decoupling model (DM) to calculate the urbanization and eco-environment coupling coordination degree (UECCD) and the decoupling index (DI) in 30 provinces and municipalities of China from 2008 to 2017. Second, we use gravity model to construct urbanization and eco-environment coupling coordination network (UECCN), in which provinces are nodes and spatial connection relationships of UECCD are edges between nodes. Third, we introduce social network analysis (SNA) to reveal spatial network characteristics of UECCN without using local spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Finally, we employ spatial econometric model to reveal factors that influence urbanization and eco-environment coupling effect. The major findings and conclusions of this study are summarized as follows. (1) The main subclasses of UECCD and DI are basically uncoordinated patterns with eco-environment lagging and weak decoupling, respectively. (2) Only two spatial agglomeration types of UECCD exist, the high-high (H-H) clustering in Shanghai and the low-low (L-L) clustering in western China, whereas no significant spatial agglomeration effect is observed among most provinces. (3) The distribution characteristics of UECCN are sparse in western China and dense in eastern China, and the spatial correlation strength of UECCN improves. (4) Technological innovation plays a critical role in promoting UECCD, while the total population, per capita disposable income, coupling network structure, and environmental regulations exert significant impact on UECCD. Collectively, we propose to prioritize governance provinces with low UECCD in western China as well as adequately utilize the positive externalities of key node provinces in eastern China. Equally importantly, we suggest that it is also critical to fully exert a driving force of technological innovation on improving the UECCD by promoting renewable energy utilization.