Can New Urbanization Construction Improve Ecological Welfare Performance in the Yangtze River Economic Belt?

Abstract

New urbanization construction can effectively improve resource allocation efficiency and promote high-quality development, so there is practical significance to exploring the relationship between new urbanization construction and ecological welfare performance in order to achieve a win-win situation of ecological environmental protection and high-quality development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. This paper innovatively, from the perspective of input-output, constructs a framework for analyzing the ecological welfare performance, measures the ecological welfare performance of Yangtze River Economic Belt with SE-SBM model, and empirically analyzes the impact of new urbanization on ecological welfare performance using the fixed-effect model. The results showed that: (1). the ecological welfare performance of the Yangtze River Economic Belt showed a U-shaped trend of decreasing and then increasing as a whole. There were significant regional differences in the east, middle, and west of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, especially in the eastern region, a region that has shown an obvious growth trend. (2). Population and land urbanization had a significant negative inhibitory effect on improving ecological welfare performance. On the contrary, economic urbanization and social urbanization had significant positive effects on improving ecological welfare performance. (3). Adopting and implementing policies such as the National New Urbanization Plan (2021–2035) encouraged the co-development of new urbanization and ecological civilizations, promoting new urbanization construction and playing a beneficial role in transforming ecological welfare. So, the Yangtze River Economic Belt should promote a new type of urbanization going forward, promoting green transformation and the upgrading of industries, standardizing the utilization of land resources, improving the well-being of urban residents, and effectively governing urban environmental pollution.