Industrial and Agricultural Water Use Efficiency and Influencing Factors in the Process of Urbanization in the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Yellow River Basin, China

Abstract

Improving water utilization efficiency can effectively alleviate the contradiction between water shortage and water demand in the process of rapid urbanization. The middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin, China, are characterized by water shortage. In order to improve water use efficiency, taking the 43 prefecture-level units in this region as the study area, industrial and agricultural water use efficiency is calculated based on the undesired SBM-DEA model. Then, the Tobit model is used to explore their influencing factors. The results show that the regional average agricultural water use efficiency is greater than the industrial water use efficiency. The temporal trend indicates that the agricultural water use efficiency shows a fluctuating upward trend, while industrial water use efficiency has a fluctuating downward trend. The gravity center of industrial water use efficiency moves from northwest to southeast in a “Z” shape, while the gravity center of agricultural water use efficiency moves westward as a whole. From the perspective of spatial patterns, the standard deviation ellipse of industrial water use efficiency shows that the industrial water use efficiency is higher in the east–west direction, while the agricultural water use efficiency is higher in the northwest–southeast direction. The improvement of urbanization level is conducive to the improvement of industrial water use efficiency; however, the development of urbanization has a significant inhibitory effect on improving agricultural water use efficiency.