Ecosystem assets, as an important part of the natural resource assets to support human socio-economic development, are the basis for the provision of ecosystem products and services to humans, and consequently for the generation of ecological benefits and gross ecosystem product, including natural ecosystems such as forests and grasslands, artificial ecosystems based on natural ecological processes such as farmland and urban green space, as well as wildlife resources. Ecosystem asset quality is the synthesis of structural and functional characteristics of ecosystems, reflecting the capacity to provide ecosystem services sustainably. Assessing the ecosystem asset quality is one of the most complex parts in ecosystem asset accounting. As a new perspective of ecosystem accounting, ecosystem asset quality emphasizes both natural and socio-economic attributes of ecosystems, which is highly significant in promoting ecosystem valorization, ecosystem asset management and the realization of the value of ecosystem products. In this review, we systematically summarize the concepts, assessment methods and indicators of ecosystem asset quality, and also provide an overview of global relevant cases. Issues, such as the improvement of the indicator system and the comprehensive assessment, and suggestions for the assessment of ecosystem asset quality are proposed to establish a framework for future research, and to promote global ecosystem assessment and accounting with its application in ecological and environmental protection policymaking.
Land system science is dedicated to addressing complex socio-economic and ecological challenges and developing sustainable land use solutions. Food inherently serves as a critical link between human societal systems and natural systems. Ensuring food security is not only a key component of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals but also a crucial task for China's agricultural production transformation and people's livelihoods improvement. This study systematically analyzes the research topics and key advancements in land system science related to food security goals. The findings reveal that, due to the land's position at the intersection of multiple interests associated with sustainable social development, the non-linear transformations and complex feedback mechanisms within land systems endow land system science with four prominent characteristics: interdisciplinarity, systematicity, sustainability, and complexity. In the realm of food security, land system science has achieved notable successes, encompassing five core research areas: land use strategies, land use transitions, land use telecoupling mechanisms, land use demand modelling, and the optimization of land management systems. These studies present the transformative trend towards emphasizing the significance of cross-spatiotemporal spillover effects, adopting systematic and holistic perspectives, and underscoring the sustainable development goals. Future research should be grounded in the logical foundation of food "flow spaces" and the food value chain, employing systems thinking to develop sustainable land use solutions and strengthen land system science in the areas of integrated research on multi-element coupling and interdisciplinary theoretical innovations, so as to contribute to the realization of food security goals.
The high-quality development of the supply-demand relationship in urban living space is related to the well-being of urban residents, but the imbalance and insufficiency of supply and demand contradictions still exist in the New Era. Based on this, combined with the shift towards humanization and intelligence in the field of research, and by drawing on the theories of spatio-temporal behavior and flow space, a diverse, dynamic, and interconnected perspective of activities is introduced to deepen the exploration of the supply and demand relationship of urban living space. By analyzing the connotation of the supply and demand relationship of urban living space, a conceptual model of the bottom-up translation and representation of the interactive relationship between "man and land" composed of the daily activities and the environment of urban residents is constructed. And combined with the support of multi-source geographic big data, a research framework covering key content and analysis ideas such as comprehensive evaluation, pattern recognition, mechanism revelation, and optimization mechanism is proposed. This research constructs a conceptual model and research framework from the perspective of activities, actively responding to the diverse forms of real life scenarios supported by elements such as "time, space, place, flow, virtuality, and entity". It improves the deconstruction and organizational reconstruction of the origin of the supply-demand relationship in living spaces, enriches the analysis path and comprehensive judgment of unilateral, bilateral, and systemic relationships inside and outside the supply and demand system, which provides useful insights and references for the transformation of urban living space services and governance.
The energy conservation and emission reduction fiscal policy is a major institutional innovation in China's green finance sector and is crucial for achieving the "dual carbon" goals. This paper takes the pilot comprehensive demonstration cities for this policy as the exogenous policy impact, and analyzes its effects on energy and industrial structure transformation using a difference-in-differences model and a dual machine learning model. The results indicate that establishing comprehensive demonstration cities significantly enhances the optimization of energy structure and the upgrading of industrial structure in the region. These conclusions remain robust after a series of tests, including parallel trend and heterogeneous treatment effects. Mechanism analysis shows that the policy pilot can improve energy and industrial structures by promoting energy- and environment-oriented technologies and capacity utilization. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the implementation effect of the pilot policy is more prominent in core large cities, non-industrial base cities, highly market-oriented cities, and cities with low financial pressure. Further research demonstrates that constructing demonstration cities offers obvious advantages in promoting the realization of six tasks initially set by the policy, including industrial decarbonization, clean transportation, green building, service intensification, reduction of major pollutants, and large-scale utilization of renewable energy. The findings of the study provide valuable insights for designing and implementing more comprehensive green fiscal policies in China in the future.
As urbanization dynamics transform and dominant social challenges change, population migration in China has exhibited distinct new trends. Understanding the regional opportunity factors that shape migration is crucial for uncovering the driving forces behind these changes. This study builds on the theoretical framework of regional opportunity structures, developing an evaluation system that uses the entropy weight method, the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory method, and self-organizing map neural network techniques to assess and categorize the regional opportunity levels of China's prefecture-level cities. Using data from CMDS 2017, the research explores how regional opportunity levels affect both the mobility-stickiness of population migration. The main findings are as follows: (1) By introducing the geographical concept of "regional opportunities" into population migration research, this study creates a "mobility-stickiness" analytical framework. This framework investigates how spatial differences in regional opportunities shape migration behavior, focusing on four key dimensions: economic development opportunities, life service opportunities, institutional and cultural opportunities, and natural environment opportunities. (2) The overall regional opportunity levels in China are generally aligned with the levels of regional economic development and can be categorized into seven distinct clusters. (3) Major urban agglomerations and provincial capital cities are the primary destinations for population migration. Economic opportunities remain a key driver of migration from a mobility perspective, while differences in migration destinations and motivations shape the diverse impacts of various opportunity dimensions from a retention perspective. Individual characteristics also play a significant role in moderating how regional opportunities impact migration decisions. (4) Based on the influence of the dominant and limiting factors of regional opportunities on population migration, the study identifies four types of regional opportunity models: hard-factor dominant zones, hard-factor constrained zones, soft-factor dominant zones, and soft-factor constrained zones. Targeted strategies are suggested to address the unique challenges and strengths of each type. The framework for analyzing regional opportunities proposed in this study offers broad applicability beyond China, providing valuable insights for designing population management and regional development policies in other contexts.
Neo-endogenous development is an important way to realise the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, and the reform of the land property rights system plays an important role in activating the internal and external development momentum of agriculture and rural areas. Based on the multi-period double-difference method, the study analyses and examines the impact of "Three Rights Separation" of agricultural land on the neo-endogenous development of agriculture and rural areas and its mechanism of action using balanced panel data of 206 prefecture-level cities in China from 2008 to 2022. The study finds that: (1) "Three Rights Separation" of agricultural land significantly improves the level of neo-endogenous development in agriculture and rural areas. (2) Promoting land scale and attracting capital investment are two important channels through which we can exert the policy effect of "Three Rights Separation" of agricultural land. (3) "Three Rights Separation" of agricultural land has significantly raised the level of neo-endogenous development in agriculture and rural areas. (4) "Three Rights Separation" of agricultural land will enhance the level of neo-endogenous development of agriculture and rural areas to a greater extent in areas with a lower degree of deepening of agricultural capital and better scientific and educational environments, and the policy effect will not be significantly different due to the loss of rural labour and the differences in natural resource endowment. This paper provides more theoretical support and empirical evidence for the use of land property rights reform to accelerate agricultural and rural development and thus achieve agricultural and rural modernization.
New infrastructure construction is emerging as a key driver for achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in the digital economy era, fostering green, low-carbon, and high-quality economic and social development. Using panel data from 30 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in China from 2007 to 2022, this study measures indicators of new infrastructure development and empirically examines its synergistic effects on pollution reduction and carbon mitigation from the perspective of innovation factor misallocation. The findings indicate that: (1) New infrastructure significantly enhances coordinated governance in pollution reduction and carbon mitigation. This conclusion remains robust after a series of endogeneity and stability tests. However, the synergy between pollution reduction and carbon mitigation is not immediately observable. Only after the new infrastructure development surpasses certain "thresholds" does its effect on pollution and carbon reduction become evident. (2) Mechanism analysis reveals that new infrastructure alleviates the misallocation of R&D personnel, thereby promoting pollution reduction and carbon mitigation. However, the mechanism based on the misallocation of R&D capital has yet to fully manifest its effects. Factors such as R&D personnel mobility, human capital levels, and skill matching are effective in addressing R&D personnel misallocation and unlocking the benefits of technological innovation through new infrastructure, whereas government funding does not show a significant improvement in these outcomes. (3) Further analysis shows that new infrastructure can effectively reduce the "rebound" in carbon emissions currently. Nevertheless, in terms of spatial correlation, the overall impact of new infrastructure on coordinated pollution reduction and carbon mitigation exhibits negative externalities. The conclusions of this study provide a viable pathway for achieving the synergistic effects of pollution reduction and carbon mitigation, contributing to the "dual carbon" goals. These findings also offer empirical support for local governments in actively planning and advancing strategic layouts for new infrastructure.
The green transition of cultivated land Use (GTCLU) is of great significance for building a new pattern of cultivated protection with coordinated development of water and soil resources under the background of global climate change, ensuring the quality and safety of agricultural products, and promoting green agricultural development. Based on field surveys of farmers in Shenyang, this study explores the conceptual connotation of GTCLU and estimate its level at the farmer household scale, and theoretically analyzes and empirically tests whether and how intermediate inputs affected the GTCLU. The results indicate that: (1) The GTCLU has established a composite mapping relationship of ''water, land, food, and carbon'', which has the development characteristics of resource conservation and efficiency, good production environment, product quality and safety, and ecological environment friendliness. (2) The GTCLU level of sample farmers is observed in the transition type III, and compared to small farmers, the proportion of large-scale households in transition type IV is relatively large. The higher the proportion of per capita household income and non-agricultural income, the lower the GTCLU level of farmers. With the improvement of rural digitalization level, the GTCLU level of farmers is gradually increasing. (3) There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between intermediate input and farmers' GTCLU level, that is, when the intensity of intermediate input exceeds 0.375, it will have a suppressive effect on farmers' GTCLU level. (4) Social norms have a positive moderating effect on the inverted U-shaped relationship between intermediate inputs and farmers' GTCLU levels. As social norm constraints continue to strengthen, the inverted U-shaped curve becomes steeper and the inflection point shifts to the left. The impact of environmental regulations on the inverted U-shaped relationship exhibits heterogeneity in business scale, meaning it does not affect large-scale households but has a significant effect on small-scale farmers. Therefore, it is necessary to further optimize the structure of intermediate inputs, enhance the soft constraint mechanism of social norms, fully utilize the combination of environmental regulatory tools, and promote the green transition of cultivated land use at the farmer household scale in a scientific and reasonable manner.
To enhance regional agglomeration and carrying capacity, the State Council and provincial governments have successively approved several urban agglomeration plans. However, the impact of urban agglomeration planning on land resource carrying capacity needs to be tested. Therefore, based on panel data from 117 cities both within and outside the planning scope of the five major urban agglomerations in the Yangtze River Economic Belt during the period of 2005-2022, this paper employs multi-period difference-in-differences model and mediation effect model to empirically explore the effect and mechanism of urban agglomeration planning on land resource carrying capacity, and analyzes spatial spillover effect through the spatial Durbin model. The main findings are as follows: (1) Urban agglomeration planning can effectively enhance the land resource carrying capacity, but it has different impacts on its subsystems. The results indicate that urban agglomeration planning significantly enhances the land economic carrying capacity, but it has a significant negative effect on the land ecological carrying capacity. (2) Urban agglomeration planning will enhance the land resource carrying capacity of cities within the urban agglomeration by enhancing urban innovativeness, government competitiveness, and public service supply capacity. (3) Urban agglomeration planning has a significant positive spillover effect on the land resource carrying capacity of neighboring cities, but this effect is spatially confined to the urban agglomerations, which are more mature in terms of development. These findings provide theoretical support and empirical evidence for improving urban agglomeration planning policies and enhancing land resource carrying capacity within the context of high-quality development.
China is a major agricultural country, and geographical indications of agricultural products can promote high-quality agricultural development, alleviate issues relating to agriculture, rural areas, and rural residents, and achieve comprehensive rural revitalization. In the context of insufficient research on the impact of geographical indications on ecosystem protection, research on the perception effect of geographical indications on ecosystem services can serve as supplementary content to enrich the protection effect of geographical indications. This article constructs an ecosystem service perception evaluation index system based on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Framework. Taking the high-quality apple production base in the Weibei dryland region as an example, this study explores the perception effect of geographic indications on ecosystem services through propensity score matching method. Research has found that the participation of farmers in the use of geographical indications is influenced by the gender of the head of household, education level, understanding of geographical indications, attention to apple quality, and the location. Geographical indications have a significant impact on the perception of ecosystem services, and the perception level of ecosystem services by farmers participating in the use of geographical indications has increased by 3.8% to 4.3%. In the future, it is necessary to continue to promote geographical indications and encourage more farmers to participate in their use in order to improve their perception of ecosystem services.
Based on the micro-data of China Land Economic Survey conducted in Jiangsu province and the utility perception of rural residents, this paper empirically analyzed the impact of rural industry integration on rural residents' satisfaction with rural revitalization construction and its mechanism by using the order probit model. It is found that: (1) Rural industry integration can significantly improve the satisfaction of rural revitalization construction, and this conclusion is still valid after considering a series of tests. (2) The improvement of rural industry integration degree is conducive to improve the satisfaction of rural revitalization construction, but different integration modes have different promoting effects on rural revitalization effect, especially the integration mode of technology penetration, chain extension and function expansion. (3) Raising household income, and enhancing economic status identity and subjective happiness perception are important mechanisms for rural industry integration to release the effect of rural revitalization. (4) The effect of rural industry integration on rural revitalization is more obvious in villages with higher economic development level and stronger intervention degree of rural affairs organization. This paper enriches the relevant research of rural industry integration, and provides new ideas for accelerating the process of agricultural and rural modernization, promoting the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas and improving the well-being of rural residents.
Exploring the influencing factors of farmers' voluntary and compensated withdrawal intention from homestead land is of great significance for promoting the people-oriented rural land system reform. Utilizing micro-survey data encompassing a nationwide scope, this study is anchored in the multifunctional perspective of land, which delineates how the transfer of contracted land influences the willingness to withdraw homestead land and demonstrate the mediating role of household livelihood strategies, as well as the moderating effects of generational disparities and reform pilot effect. The findings are as following: (1) The inflow of contracted land suppresses farmers' willingness to withdraw homestead land, whereas the outflow of contracted land enhances this willingness. (2) Using the ratio of out-migrating population and the proportion of non-agricultural income as proxy variables to assess the mediating role of household livelihood strategies, the study identifies that demographic transition is a significant pathway through which land transfer impacts the willingness to withdraw homestead land, rather than the change of household income structures. (3) The effect of outflow of contracted land in enhancing the willingness of younger farmers to withdraw homestead land is more pronounced, while its influence is less significant among farmers in reform pilot areas. Consequently, future policy formulations regarding homestead land withdrawal should identify the target group, with a respect for the willingness of farmers. It is necessary to synchronize policies of homestead withdrawal and contracted land transfer. It is also imperative to continuously enhance the off-farm employment capabilities of farmers and to facilitate the high-quality migration of the rural population in a scientifically sound manner. Policies should be tailored to account for the heterogeneity among farmers and the unique characteristics of different regions.
The study of the impact of digital skills on the proactive adaptive behavior of farmers in grain production is of significance for ensuring national food security. This study utilizes survey data from the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River Basin to empirically examine the impact of digital skills on farmers' adaptive behaviors in grain production and elucidate the underlying mechanisms. The analysis reveals three key findings: (1) Digital skills significantly encourage farmers to engage in proactive adaptive behaviors in grain production. (2) Digital skills enhance these behaviors by improving farmers' integration into industry chains and expanding their knowledge networks. (3) The influence of digital skills is more pronounced among large-scale farmers, those with higher levels of education and income, and those in non-grain production areas or villages with high collective economic income. Additionally, farmers who have developed high-standard farmland show a greater propensity to benefit from digital skills. Based on these findings, the paper proposes policy interventions to leverage platform resources and digital tools to further enhance farmers' digital competencies, thereby supporting sustainable agricultural practices and food security.
Against the backdrop of increasing challenges to the territorial space system due to uncertainty risks and traditional conflicts, a deep understanding of the territorial space resilience in order to promote the transformation of the social-ecological system is crucial to the realization of the overall development and security strategy. On the basis of clarifying the connotation of territorial space resilience, we select the counties in Jiangsu province as the case area, and use HP filter analysis, adaptive cycle theory and panel vector autoregression to explore the evolution characteristics of territorial space resilience in different adaptive cycle stages and its interaction with urbanization. Firstly, the fundamental components of territorial space resilience in a normalized scenario include natural resource endowment support, territorial space functional resistance, and territorial space flow transformation. The dynamic evolution of territorial space resilience follows the underlying logic of the adaptive cycle theory's "utilization, conservation, release, and reorganization" cycle. Different development characteristics emerge at each stage. Secondly, the level of territorial space resilience in Jiangsu province's counties gradually increased between 2000 and 2022. The internal ranking of resilience dimensions is as follows: territorial space functional resistance>territorial space flow transformation>natural resource endowment support. The resilience level can be divided into four stages: utilization (2000-2006), conservation (2007-2013), release (2014-2018), and reorganization (2019-2022). These stages exhibit evolutionary characteristics of increase-decrease-increase-decrease, with the overall Gini coefficient following the pattern: conservation>utilization>release>reorganization. Thirdly, urbanization and territorial space resilience interact with each other over the long term among county units in Jiangsu province, and the dynamic relationship between the variables is basically stable, showing a positive driving effect, but the degree of contribution rate varies among regions. When the level of urbanization is impacted by the level of territorial space resilience, the degree of influence shows the trend of enhancement-weakening-enhancement-weakening-stability, and the level of territorial space resilience shows the trend of decline-rise-stability when facing the impact of urbanization. The study provides scientific evidence and decision-making references to promote regional sustainable development in a positive spiral.
This study starts from the perspective of stakeholders, clarifies the interactive relationship between the government, mining enterprises, and residents in mining areas, and constructs a cooperative governance mechanism for mine ecological restoration. The game relationship is analyzed through a cooperative game model. The results indicate that: (1) The existing repair models cannot meet the reasonable repair needs, and there is an urgent need to transform from a single dominant model to diversified cooperative governance. (2) Through the Shapley value benefit distribution model analysis, it was found that when the three parties actively participate in cooperation, the benefits are optimal, and the ideal distribution ratio is one-third each, which can promote positive interaction among the three parties. (3) Taking Qidong Duijiachong Iron Mine in Hunan province as an empirical case, the results show that the benefits of tripartite cooperation are significantly higher than those of non cooperation or two-way cooperation. (4) The revised Shapley value was used to verify that the distribution of benefits under cooperation can effectively promote the realization of mine ecological restoration. Cooperative governance conforms to the modernization trend of ecological governance in China, can balance the conflicts of interests among multiple stakeholders, and provide reference for optimizing ecological restoration mechanisms.
