Coupling and coordination analysis of urbanization, economy and environment of Shandong Province, China

Extensive urbanization and industrialization are taking place in eastern China, resulting in huge challenges on environmental quality. In this case, a coupling and coordination model to analyze the complex relationship between urbanization, economy and environment was developed. The corresponding composite system was built using system dynamics, consisted of urbanization level, urbanization efficiency, social impact, industrial structure, economic level, resource utilization, environmental pollution and environmental protection. Based on the statistics data of each component in temporal sequence (2006–2017) of Shandong province, the inherent relationship of the composite system was explored. The results showed that (1) the key influencing factors of the composite system were environmental pollution level, environmental protection intensity, urbanization extent, industrial structure type, and resource utilization efficiency (in descending order of importance); (2) the coordination degree between economy and urbanization subsystem was the lowest, therefore much more efforts should be made on the coordinated development between urbanization evolution and economic growth; (3) the coupling degree reached a high level for both subsystems and the composite system, in contrast, the coordination degree exhibited an increasing trend from low-level coordination to medium coordination. It is necessary to enhance the coordinated development of urbanization, economy and environment, to achieve sustainable development of ecological civilized society.