Soil and water conservation facilities are effective means to systematically improve the quality of farmland, and a requirement of implementing the rural revitalization strategy. The modernization of grassroots governance has gradually become one of the core engines to improving the quality of farmland. It is necessary and practical to scientifically investigate and evaluate the impact of primary-level governance characteristics on farmers’participation in cooperative maintanence on soil and water conservation facilities. Based on the survey data from 723 farmers from Xinjiang, we used exploratory factor analysis and instrumental variable mediation effect model to investigate the direct impact of primary-level collaborative governance on farmers’participation in cooperative maintanence on soil and water conservation facilities, and the the indirect impact of primary-level collaborative governance mediated by rule fairness perception on farmers’participation in cooperative maintanence on soil and water conservation facilities. The results show that: (1) The primary-level collaborative governance has a significant positive impact on farmers’participation in cooperative maintanence on soil and water conservation facilities; (2) Farmers’ perception of rule fairness plays a positive intermediary role in their participation decision and the effect of management and protection; (3) Further investigation found that the dimensions of collaborative participation, collaborative support, and collaborative network significantly encourage farmers to participate in cooperative maintanence on soil and water conservation facilities, while only the dimensions of collaborative support and collaborative trust play an incentive role in collective action of the cooperative maintanence on soil and water conservation facilities. This study supplemented and improved the research on the impact mechanism of grassroots governance on cooperative management and protection investment of soil and water conservation facilities, and has important policy implications for improving the incentive mechanism of rural farmland quality protection and improving the performance of rural grassroots governance.
With the outflow of rural labor, improving the agricultural production trusteeship system has become an effective way to connect small farmers and modern agricultural development. Since production trusteeship has been playing an increasingly important role in the field of high-quality agricultural development, this study examined the effect of different kinds of pest control trusteeship on the technical efficiency of pesticides and pathways of influence from the perspective of task division efficiency using data from a survey of 1103 wheat growers in Shandong Province. After using the propensity score matching model to solve the problems of endogenous and self-selection, it was concluded that participation in the trusteeship was not always able to improve the technical efficiency of farmers’ production: (1) The large-scale trusteeship that formed the horizontal division efficiency or the whole process trusteeship that deepened the vertical coordination efficiency played a significant role in improving the technical efficiency of pesticides, while the fragmented trusteeship and the single step trusteeship for pest control were not able to optimize the production efficiency, and their technical efficiency of pesticides were even lower than that from the intensive cultivation of farmers. (2) Forming horizontal division efficiency of pest control could alleviate the inefficiency of single step trusteeship. (3) Village collective supervision of production trusteeship did not play a role in improving technical efficiency. These conclusions are still valid in the scale heterogeneity analysis and after replacing the propensity score matching model with the IV-Tobit model and truncated samples. (4) Green machinery and green technology had a significant positive strengthening function on improving technical efficiency in the trusteeship with division efficiency. Our results provide some reference for optimizing the current agricultural production trusteeship system and improving the quality and efficiency of production trusteeship.
Under the background of consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation and effectively connecting the goal of rural revitalization, the role of agricultural insurance on affecting the allocation of production factors and facilitating the development of modern agriculture needs to be studied. Based on the survey data of 583 farmers in Shandong and Gansu provinces and taking into account small farmers and new agricultural business entities, this study analyzed the impact of agricultural insurance protection level on the allocation of agricultural production factors from the perspective of facilitating modern agricultural development, and investigated the specific mechanisms that affect the allocation of production factors. The results show that: (1) There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between agricultural insurance protection level and the scale of production, capital investment scale, and technology investment scale, which first provides positive incentive and then becomes negative inhibition, and there is a linear positive relationship with the level of agricultural green production. (2) The impact of insurance protection level on the allocation of production factors of small farmers and new agricultural operators is heterogeneous. For small farmers, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between protection level and capital investment scale and technology investment scale, and a linear positive relationship with the level of green production. For the new agricultural business entities, however, the protection level has only an inverted U-shaped relationship with the scale of production, capital investment scale, and technology investment scale. (3) Higher agricultural insurance protection level mainly expands the scale of land operation by promoting land transfer, increases agricultural capital investment by enhancing the synergistic effect of agricultural credit, and enhances agricultural technology investment by strengthening agricultural technology training, and then promotes the development of modern agriculture. Based on these results, we put forward some policy recommendations, including comprehensively improving the protection level, enhancing targeted subsidy policies, alleviating agricultural credit constraints, and curbing moral hazards.
Agricultural modernization is a major task in comprehensively building a modern socialist country. The comparative analysis of agricultural modernization from an international perspective can help reveal the status and shortcomings of agricultural modernization in China and learn the experience of countries with advanced agricultural modernization. This study diagnosed the state of agricultural modernization in China from the two aspects of goals and processes. The goal aspect focused on the degree of development of agricultural modernization, and an indicator system was established from three dimensions including output capacity, competitiveness, and resource and environment friendliness to examine the level of agricultural modernization of China and other 13 countries in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2009. The aspect of process focused on the influencing factors of agricultural modernization, and the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) regression method was used to examine the influence of resource endowment, economic structure, capital input and macro environment on the level of agricultural modernization. The study found that: (1) China’s agricultural modernization level is at the medium level, and the gap from major developed countries is narrowing. (2) China’s agriculture is relatively strong in output capacity, and significantly weaker in competitiveness and resource and environment friendliness, with obvious shortcomings in agricultural trade competitiveness, labor productivity, per capita food production, and fertilizer and pesticide utilization efficiency. (3) The development of agricultural modernization in China is not only limited by the rigid constraints of resource endowment, but also closely related to the fact that China’s transformation of agricultural employment structure lags behind the transformation of output value structure, the inputs to agriculture are relatively weak, and the level of economic development lags behind that of developed countries. (4) Considering the comprehensive effect of various influencing factors and the current national condition of China, it is suggested to implement comprehensive policies including paying more attention to agricultural competitiveness and achieving sustainable development of resources and environment, timely adjustment of the structure of agricultural production, strictly implementing the strategy of “storing grain in land and technology”, promoting the construction of the entire agricultural industry chain and integrated development of agricultural industry, and focusing on the overall industry-agriculture-urban-rural situation, so that the development of agricultural modernization can be better promoted.
As an important strategic resource, the production and consumption of iron ore has significant impacts on the world economy, and it is important to study the resilience of the international trade network of iron ore to ensure the future security of iron ore supply and demand. This study constructed international trade networks by considering five major categories of upstream and downstream products of iron ore, measured the resilience of the networks from both static and dynamic (disruption simulation) aspects, and measured and classified the level of disruption resistance of the top 20 global economies in the networks of the five categories of products. The results show that: (1) The combined resilience levels of the iron ore and lump ore networks are low, the scrap network is average, and the steel and pig iron networks are high, indicating that the iron raw material trade network, which is at the upstream, has low resilience and is severely affected by external disruptions, while the iron product trade networks, which are at the midstream and downstream, have high resilience and are not as severely affected by shocks. (2) In the iron ore, lump ore, pig iron, and steel networks, China’s node resilience level is strong and is positioned in the first tier, but in the second tier in the scrap network, indicating that the development of the scrap industry needs to be emphasized and improved. This paper is of guidance to ensure the security and stability of supply and demand of iron ore products in China.
Improving the energy efficiency is considered the main way to reduce energy consumption in the short term, but its effectiveness may be alleviated due to the existence of rebound effect. Since the change of residents’ consumption behavior caused by price fluctuation is an important source of energy rebound effect, which will further be amplifed due to the high level of residential income in Beijing, this study established a LA-AIDS model to analyze the consumption characteristics of Beijing residents. On this basis, the consumption redistribution and other behaviors of residents under the corresponding proportion of energy efficiency improvement were simulated to quantify the energy rebound effect of Beijing from 2000 to 2019, and the energy rebound amounts generated by the consumption of different types of energy goods and services were compared. Meanwhile, the substitution effect and income effect of residential energy consumption change caused by price fluctuation were decomposed according to the Slutsky equation, and the key factors of residential energy rebound effect in Beijing were further explored. Results suggest that: (1) The energy rebound of Beijing’s residential sector has two phenomena: backfire effect and partial rebound effect, and the income effect due to price fluctuation is the main source of energy rebound effect. (2) Residential goods have the most obvious promoting effect on the increase of the energy rebound effect, while transportation and communication goods have the most obvious inhibiting effect. (3) The consumption behaviors of residents, the proportion of energy efficiency improvement in different product categories, and the ratio of energy in total costs all contribute to the general degree of rebound effects. Finally, this article puts forward some recommendations on how to effectively mitigate the energy rebound effect from the perspectives of residents, manufacturers, and policymakers.
In order to ensure that China can achieve the goal of carbon peak by 2030, provincial decomposition of China’s carbon emission reduction targets is essential. This study followed the three principles of fairness, efficiency, and feasibility and selected five decomposition criteria, namely, per capita CO2 emissions, per capita disposable income, proportion of the tertiary industry in GDP, energy consumption per unit GDP, and per capita GDP level, to build a provincial decomposition model of the target for incremental control of China's carbon emission, and simulated different GDP growth scenarios (2020 to 2025 scenario and three scenarios of high, low and baseline GDP growth rate from 2025 to 2030). The research found that: (1) Economic development and historical carbon emissions are important factors that affect the provincial decomposition of carbon emission reduction targets, showing the characteristics of stable carbon intensity reduction targets obtained from extreme ranked provinces. The carbon intensity reduction targets derived from non extreme provinces are affected by the principles of fairness, efficiency and feasibility at the same time. Some provinces have characteristics of different target groups under different situation preferences. (2) China’s carbon peaking trend is stable, and the impact of external shocks on GDP growth has not changed the grouping results of carbon emission reduction targets of each province, so the provincial decomposition results of national emission reduction targets are generally stable. The results of this study will help provinces to formulate emission reduction targets flexibly to ensure the smooth realization of national emission reduction targets.
Territorial space is the core carrier and resource to support the realization of the dual carbon goals. Strengthening the management of territorial carbon sink conflicts at the urban agglomeration scale is an important way to coordinately realize the goals. By analyzing the impact mechanism of spatial conflicts on the carbon sink effect, a comprehensive measurement index was constructed. Taking the 307 counties in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration as the object, this empirical research showed that: (1) The overall structure of territorial carbon sink conflicts has been out of balance, and the number of evaluation units under the consistently controllable, basically controllable, on the verge of out of control, basically out of control, and seriously out of control stage accounted for 15.64%, 25.41%, 23.45%, 26.71%, and 8.79%; (2) The territorial carbon sink conflicts exacerbated the imbalance of regional carbon budgets. The carbon sinks in the controllable-stage regions reached 81.71%, while the carbon sources in the uncontrolled-stage regions reached 71.48%; (3) Territorial spatial carbon sink conflicts have a significant positive correlation and spatial agglomeration. The cold spots are concentrated in the coastal areas of Jiangsu Province, Dabie Mountains in Western Anhui and Southern Anhui-Southwestern Zhejiang Provinces, while the hot spots are mainly counties in Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Hangzhou. (4) At the city scale, cities at the out-of-control stage are concentrated in a belt along the Hangzhou Bay to the northern part of Anhui Province. The farther away from the belt, the lower the conflict values. Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Wuxi are seriously out of control, Suqian, Suzhou of Anhui Province, and Huai’an are basically out of control, 15 cities are on the verge of out of control. Finally, relevant countermeasures and recommendations are put forward to improve the coordinated management of urban agglomeration territorial carbon sink conflicts.
With the rapid development of electronic commerce, express mail packing increases the waste of resources and environmental pollution, and it is necessary to improve its reuse and recycling. Based on 1151 consumer survey data in the Northeast, Central and Western regions, this study used the Probit model to analyze the impact of environmental cognition (environmental concern, attitude, and responsibility) and perceived benefits on consumer participation in express packaging material recycling, used hierarchical regression to analyze the moderating effect of policy publicity and convenience on the impact of environmental cognition and perceived benefits on the relationship between consumers’ willingness and behavior to recycle, and then used the interpretive structure model (ISM) to analyze the logical relationship between various influencing factors. The results show that: (1) Environmental concern, attitude, responsibility, and perceived benefits all have significant negative impact on the deviation between consumers’ willingness and behavior to participate in express packaging classified recovery; (2) Policy publicity and convenience not only have a significant negative impact on the deviation between consumers’ willingness to recycle and their behavior, but also play a negative regulatory role in the impact path of environmental cognition and perceived benefits on the deviation between consumers’ willingness to recycle and their behavior; (3) Age, education level, and online shopping times have a significant negative impact on the deviation between consumers’ willingness to classified recovery and their behavior; (4) The logic hierarchical relationship shows that on the surface, the direct cause of the deviation between consumers’ willingness and behavior is environmental awareness and perceived benefits, and policy publicity and convenience are indirect factors at the medium level. Age, education level, and online shopping times are the underlying fundamental factors of the deviation between willingness and behavior. Moreover, both the deep and medium level factors can only affect the deviation between consumers’ willingness and behavior through the superficial direct factors. Therefore, improving consumer cognitive environment, providing incentives, improving convenience to access recycling facilities, and strengthening policy propaganda can play an important promoting role for consumers to participate in the classified recovery of express packaging.
As an important part of China’s agricultural industry, livestock and poultry breeding industry is currently facing the dual challenges of stable production capacity and environmental protection constraints. Under the background of continuous adjustment of livestock and poultry breeding industry layout, the resulting risk of local and regional resources overload must be paid more attention to. In this study, we constructed a breeding resources carrying risk index (BRCRI) based on the short board theory, examined the breeding resources carrying risk and the factors of “short board” in all regions of China from 2010 to 2019, and analyzed the agglomeration of regional risk values using the spatial autocorrelation method. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) The cultivated land resources carrying risk was the main problem in most areas of China for the development of breeding industry, and there are a high risk concentration. The overall risk was declining, while the risk in South China and Southwest China was higher than that in other regions; (2) Water resource was the most significant short board factor of breeding resources carrying capacity in northern China, especially in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region; (3) The risk of resources carrying was generally higher in those key areas for breeding development, and there is always a risk of resources shortage in these regions. The following recommendations were put forward. First, a long-term risk assessment and early warning system for the regional breeding resources carrying capacity should be established and the scarcest resource element should be the most important warning elements. The principle of breeding scale determined by the scarcest resources should be adopted in the regional breeding planning; Secondly, promoting the resource utilization of livestock and poultry manure and adhering to the combination of planting and breeding are the most important ways to reduce the cultivated land resources carrying risk; Finally, the cross-regional ecological compensation and resource-environmental cooperation mechanism should be improved in order to better coordinate the relationship between the whole and the part. In this process, the breeding key areas with high breeding resources carrying risk should be paid special attention to.
Farmland water conservancy governance is important for food security and the stability of rural societies. Based on the questionnaire survey data of farmers in the well-irrigated area of Hebei Province, this study evaluated the impact of small farmland water conservancy self-governance on governance performance through the ordered Probit model, and used the threshold effect model to obtain the threshold value of the user scale and analyzed the moderating effect of land fragmentation on small farmland water conservancy governance performance. The research found that: (1) The self-governance mode of small farmland water conservancy in the studied well-irrigated area resulted in poor facility maintenance level. There is no significant difference in water disputes among farmers under different governance methods. (2) In the influence of self-governance on the maintenance level of facilities, the scale of users has a threshold effect. The threshold for the number of water-using farmers in the study area is nine households; when the number of water-using farming households is higher than the threshold, self-governance leads to poor facility maintenance. (3) Land fragmentation has a moderating effect on self-governance performance. The higher degree of land fragmentation, the worse governance performance of self-governance mode in facility maintenance. Based on the above results, it is recommended that village grassroots organizations should be the main body of responsibility, and there is a need to improve the self-governance mode of small farmland water conservancy in well-irrigated areas by formulating unified maintenance measures and a progressive reward and punishment system. By guiding cooperative operation, optimizing the distribution of motor-driven wells, and reducing the degree of land fragmentation, the government can help to achieve a reasonable scale of irrigation and effective and autonomous governance of water conservancy in small-holder farmland areas.
In the context of severe challenges to the environment brought by rapid urbanization, significant progress of research has been made on the impacts of urbanization on environmental pollution, especially focusing on the Mid-Spine Belt of Beautiful China (referred to as the Mid-Spine Belt for short) formed by the spatiotemporal changes of Hu Huanyong Line, and its east-west differences. Therefore, with multiple datasets of the prefecture scale (covering a total of 314 cities) including the composite index of night-light (for the level of urbanization), PM2.5 concentration (for the degree of haze pollution), and other panel statistics during 2005-2018, the spatiotemporal heterogeneities of urbanization and haze in the Mid-Spine Belt and the eastern and western regions were consistently determined via the ArcGIS platform. Next, under the theoretical framework of the STochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) model and the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, this study empirically analyzed the heterogeneous impact of urbanization on haze pollution in the three regions and its mechanism. The main conclusions show that: (1) Affected by low population density, the rising trend of urbanization on the west side of the Mid-Spine Belt is much lower than those on the east and in the Mid-Spine Belt; (2) There is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between haze pollution and urbanization on the east side, contrasting a significantly positive linear relationship on the west and no significant relationship in the Mid-Spine Belt; (3) In the east, the adverse impact of urbanization on haze pollution may be alleviated through the effect of population concentration and industrial structure adjustment, while in the west, the effect of industrial structure is intensified, and the two effects are not obvious in the Mid-Spine Belt. These conclusions provide an empirical basis for policy recommendations such as establishing an environmental governance mechanism of regional joint prevention and control, promoting industrial restructuring and enhancing the scale effect of population aggregation, and promoting high-level modernization and high-quality urbanization in the western region.
In recent decades, as a result of the rapid urbanization globally, urban agglomerations have merged as an advanced spatial form of integrating cities. Investigating spatiotemporal patterns of urbanization in urban agglomerations is essential for urban sustainable development and management. In this study, remote sensing data, including extended time-series nighttime light (NTL) data and land-use images from 2000 to 2018, were used to examine the spatiotemporal patterns and evolution of urbanization over the last two decades in one of the most developed urban agglomerations in China: the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. A multi-metric-based approach was synthetically used to facilitate the analysis. This study first calculated NTL intensity indices and dynamic NTL intensity thresholds. Then urban area was extracted from NTL images. Landscape metrics and the standard deviation ellipse were used to evaluate urban evolution in the study area. The results suggest that : (1) The urbanization process in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration has undergone significant changes, and the process can be divided into three stages: rapid urbanization of the core cities from 2000 to 2010; fluctuating urbanization development of the core cities and their surrounding satellite cities from 2010 to 2015; and the stable urbanization stage with urbanization development mainly in medium-sized cities after 2015. (2) The spatial evolution of urbanization in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration has an obvious northeast to southwest orientation. (3) The urbanization of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration takes the two core cities of Beijing and Tianjin as the rapid expansion areas, complemented by the low-rate expansion of smaller cities, thus realizing a synergistic development of the region. This study confirmed that long time series NTL data can effectively and inexpensively monitor the urbanization process at the regional scale, and provides a methodological reference for the study of the dynamic spatial and temporal patterns of urbanization in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration.
The conflict and coordination between protected areas and human activities have become a key problem to be solved urgently in the construction of China’s protected areas system. This study constructed an analytical framework of conflict between protected area and human activities from the perspective of institutional space, took the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon National Nature Reserve as an example to analyze the evolution process and types and characterization of conflict institutional space, and then proposed the optimal regulation paths. The results show that: (1) Corresponding protected area institutional space needs to be formed for different socioeconomic development stages. When the original institutional space cannot meet the dynamic development relationship between protected area and human activities in a new stage, spatial conflicts will be triggered. (2) Conflicts follow the development process from inplicit conflict to explicit conflict, and are of varied types. (3) The overall relationship between the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon Nature Reserve and human activities is in the stage of implicit conflict, which is manifested in three aspects including urbanization development conflict, industrial restriction conflict, and border control conflict. The construction of a new classification system of protected area, optimization of spatial allocation by external boundary and internal functional partition regulation, and reasonable institutional regulation are conducive to promoting the solution of such problems and creating a win-win situation for protected area institutional space and regional sustainable development.
Ecological footprint is a key index to quantify the sustainability of regional natural capital utilization. Based on a three-dimensional ecological footprint (EF3D) model, this study evaluated the sustainable development of the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River Basin (UAMRYR), and introduced the disequilibrium index and environmental Kuznets curve to analyze the coordination between the ecological footprint index and socioeconomic development. The results show that: (1) Per capita biological capacity of the UAMRYR was decreasing while its per capita EF3D presented an increasing trend with an average annual growth rate of 6.81%, which led to serious ecological deficit. The inflection points of per capita EF3D of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan City Group (CZTCG) and Poyang Lake City Group (PYLCG) appeared in 2007 and 2009, respectively. The capital stock of regional grassland and cultivated land showed an increasing trend, while the capital flow of forestland and water areas could meet the demand of resource consumption. A serious loss of capital stock can be found in the UAMRYR, but the situation was better than that of the Chengdu-Chongqing and Yangtze River Delta City Groups. The sustainable utilization space of natural capitals in the PYLCG was better than that in the Wuhan urban agglomeration (WUG) and CZTCG. (2) There was a regional complementarity between footprint size (EFsize) and footprint depth (EFdepth), and areas with rich resources generally had lower EFsize and larger EFdepth. Cluster analysis showed that Jingmen, Xianning, and Xiangyang had a better pattern of natural capital utilization owing to their large EFsize and small EFdepth, while Wuhan, Ezhou, and Huanggang had a poor ecological sustainability owing to their small EFsize and large EFdepth. (3) The matching degrees of EF3D with water resources and population were poor. In comparison, a high matching degree was observed between EF3D and GDP. When the urbanization rate of the urban agglomeration reached a certain threshold, its relationship with per capita EF3D and EFdepth may change. The correlation between per capita EF3D and urbanization rate of the WUG, CZTCG, and PYLCG showed an inverted U shape. In addition, EFdepth of the PYLCG increased with the increase of urbanization rate, and the correlation between EFdepth and urbanization rate of the WUG and CZTCG accorded with the Kuznets curve. Findings can provide theoretical support for the sustainable use of natural capital and green development in the UAMRYR.
Improving the construction of ecological compensation mechanism and encouraging the participation of ecological conservation stakeholders are an important task of water environment protection in the new era. Based on the time series data from 2004 to 2022, this study used the induction and bibliometric analysis methods and the CiteSpace software to analyze 614 Chinese and English publications on watershed ecological compensation in China. The results show that: (1) Temporally, according to the intensity of keyword co-occurrence and the change of policies, the research on watershed ecological compensation in China can be divided into three stages: initial exploration (2004-2011), rapid development (2012-2016), and expansion and deepening (2017-2022). Spatially, the research expanded from local to basin-wide, and from provincial to inter-provincial basins. With regard to research institutions, the types and number of publishing institutions are increasing year by year, mainly concentrated in agricultural, forestry, and water conservancy colleges, and the cooperative research among institutions is limited. (2) With regard to research content, connotation and function, compensation willingness, compensation mechanism, compensation standard, and compensation models and practice have successively become the research hotspots of watershed ecological compensation. Future research should strengthen the cooperation and communication between agencies, focusing on constructing multi-function synergy compensation mechanism, exploring marketization and diversification of compensation, determining scientific and differential compensation standards, and evaluating the comprehensive effectiveness of compensation, to continuously improve the system of watershed ecological compensation research and promote the smooth development of compensation mechanism.
