Environmental performance of urban integration regions of Chengdu, Deyang, Meishan and Ziyang, based on DPSIR model

Abstract

The paper focuses on the quantitative assessment of the environmental performance of the Urban Integration region of Chengdu, Deyang, Meishan, and Ziyang (Chengdemeizi Urban Integration) in 2015-2019, including the overall level, changing trends of the environmental performance, and the key factors that influence the environmental performance. The theme framework and driver-force-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) model is used to build the evaluation indicator system, the target approximation method and the combination weighting method are adopted to calculate the environmental performance index (EPI). In addition, the Pearson correlation analysis with GDP is performed to analyze the relationship between environmental performance and the economic development level of the Urban Integration region. The results indicated that regional average scores of comprehensive environmental performances show an obvious improvement trend and had significantly positive correlation with economic level from 2015 to 2019. For the EPIs of 2nd indicators, environmental quality is the main restrictive indicator. For the EPIs of 3rd indicators, air quality, noise, and environmental management are the main restrictive indicators. Each city has different performance, and the order of EPI scores of the four cities from largest to smallest is Chengdu > Deyang > Ziyang > Meishan. Therefore, the four cities need to continuously improve their respective shortcoming environmental performance indicators and promote the balanced improvement of indicators at all levels.