The Driving Mechanism of Urban Land Green Use Efficiency in China Based on the EBM Model with Undesirable Outputs and the Spatial Dubin Model

Green development is necessary for building a high-quality modern economic system. The contribution of the article mainly includes the following three parts: First is the study on the urban land green use efficiency (ULGUE) in 30 provinces of China from 2008 to 2018 by adopting the epsilon-based measure (EBM) model with undesirable outputs to yield a more accurate and reasonable assessment result. In addition, the spatial agglomeration characteristics were analysed according to the spatial autocorrelation analysis. Thirdly, the spatial Durbin model was applied to analyse the driving factors of the WRGUE, which considers the spatial effects. The findings are as follows: (1) The regional differences in ULGUE were very significant, with the number decreasing from the coastal region to inland. (2) ULGUE showed a significantly positive spatial autocorrelation, and the spatial homogeneity was more significant than the spatial heterogeneity for ULGUE. (3) Economic development level, technical progress level, and urban population density have a significant impact on ULGUE, while the higher the proportion of the secondary industry in GDP, the lower the level of ULGUE. The research results may be a useful reference point for policymakers.