Empty talk or real action? Exploring how local government’s attention to the environment affects urban land use efficiency

Improving urban land use efficiency (ULUE) has emerged as an important strategy in cities pursuing sustainable development. Since 2007, governments at different levels have enhanced the emphasis on environmental protection, as embodied in their annual work reports. Thus, we became interested in whether local government’s attention to the environment translates into real action or remains an empty promise. Using Chinese prefecture-level panel data from 2007 to 2020, we found that local government’s attention to the environment was positively associated with ULUE, indicating that there is not a complete decoupling effect between attention and action. In addition, the relationship between environmental attention and ULUE was negatively moderated by the land finance channel and positively moderated by the industrial optimization channel. This study also employs a threshold model to precisely determine the ideal scale for land market agreements to maximize the role of the government. Notably, the positive effect of local government’s environmental attention on ULUE was negated when the proportion of negotiated land transfer surpassed 0.1874. The findings provide a benchmark for governments to improve sustainability through land resource management.