Spatial Pattern and Influencing Factors of Regional Ecological Civilisation Construction in China

Ecological civilisation construction is a strategy for regional sustainable development based on a regional system of human-land relations. The comprehensive measurement and regional differentiation in construction levels are the key issues of ecological civilisation construction. This study aims to build 35 index systems that coalesce on four aspects: ecological economic adjustment and operation, ecological and social development and progress, ecological resources and environmental security, and ecological institutional and cultural awareness. We measured and evaluated the level of ecological civilisation construction of 329 cities (prefecture-level cities, autonomous prefectures and leagues) in 2018 using a comprehensive evaluation system and a spatial autocorrelation method to assess spatial differences in the level of ecological civilisation construction across China. This approach takes ‘the humanities-economic geography’ comprehensive perspective and uses a GWR (geographically weighted regression) model to analyse 10 influencing factors. Results show that: 1) the level of ecological construction can be divided into five types: higher, high, medium, low, and lower levels, according to the evaluation score. The five types are spindle-shaped in quantity and there is a significant imbalance in their spatial distribution, mainly trending from the southeast coast to the northwest. The land is decreasing, and the southern region is higher in level than the northern region. 2) The results of the spatial autocorrelation method show obvious spatial differences in ecological civilisation construction across China and that the level of ecological civilisation construction is positively autocorrelated. From east to west, the hot zone gradually transitions to a cold zone. A high-high type is mainly distributed in eastern coastal cities of China, and the number of high-low and low-high types are small. The low-low type is mainly distributed in the northwestern and northeastern regions. 3) The effect of influencing factors is heterogeneous in their spatial distribution, and the abundance of ecological resources is the most influential factor. According to the main influencing factors, each region should adhere to the principle of differentiation according to local conditions when choosing its ecological civilisation construction path and establishing an assessment mechanism. This study provides a scientific basis for enriching the regional level measurement of ecological civilisation construction, clarifying the current level of ecological civilisation construction in China, and implementing the regional differentiation path of ecological civilisation construction.