Research on the Spatial Differences and Convergence Mechanism of Urban Land Use Efficiency under the Background of Regional Integration: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Economic Zone, China

Abstract

Revealing the spatial differences and convergence mechanism of urban land use efficiency (ULUE) under the background of regional integration is of great significance for exploring the coordinated promotion path of ULUE. We attempted to build a theoretical framework to interpret ULUE spatial convergence under the background of regional integration and build a ULUE “green” evaluation system under multi-objective constraints. Based on this, we employed the super efficiency slack-based model (SBM), exploratory spatial data analysis, and spatial convergence model incorporated into the spatial weight matrix to re-examine the true level, spatial differences, and convergence mechanism of ULUE in the Yangtze River Economic Zone from 2003 to 2019 on a city scale. The results show that: (1) during the investigation period, ULUE in the Yangtze River Economic Zone has obvious spatial disequilibrium and spatial correlation characteristics; (2) there are absolute β-space convergence and conditional β-space convergence of ULUE in the whole Yangtze River Economic Zone and its upstream, midstream, and downstream areas; (3) driven by government management, industrial development, and spatial error effects, the convergence time of ULUE in the whole Yangtze River Economic Zone and its upstream, midstream, and downstream areas is obviously shortened.