As China advances its path toward Chinese modernization, population and resource issues serve as foundational, overarching, and strategic topics that span economic and social development. The structural transformation of the population presents new challenges to the logic of resource allocation, the mechanisms driving development, and the effectiveness of governance. At present, population decline, rapid aging, and low fertility rates are converging, marking a shift in population development from "quantity-driven" phase to "structural restructuring" phase. This paper, centered on the theme of "high-quality development of population and resources", draws on insights from scholars across relevant disciplines to examine key issues such as the transition of demographic structure and migration patterns, resource adaptation and optimization, and technology-enabled governance. Based on their viewpoints, three core strategies are summarized: (1) establishing a systematic response framework to coordinate demographic optimization with resource allocation; (2) leveraging big data and artificial intelligence to enhance the intelligence level of population and resource monitoring and governance; and (3) advancing institutional innovation to overcome barriers related to household registration, social welfare, and regional disparities, thereby building an inclusive system serving for the general resident population. Experts broadly agree that a systems-thinking approach integrating diverse policy tools is essential. A paradigm shift in population governance, from passive regulation to proactive adaptation, should be driven by both technological support and institutional innovation. Building a sustainable, equitable, and efficient system for coordinated development of population and resources is key to address the challenges of population structure transformation and achieve high-quality development.
The cultivation of high-quality farmers and the protection and utilization of black soil are important starting points for the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas in Northeast China. Based on the "triple helix" theory and an analysis of high-quality farmer cultivation models alongside black soil protection practices, this paper examines the roles, logical relationships, and synergistic mechanisms linking comprehensive rural revitalization, farmer training, and soil conservation in Northeast China. Through typical case studies, it further elucidates the coordination mechanisms and sustainable pathways for integrating these elements within the rural revitalization process, proposing systematic strategies for promoting holistic rural development. The research reveals that comprehensive rural revitalization, high-quality farmer cultivation, and black soil protection form an integrated "field-subject-resource" governance model. In this model, rural revitalization serves as the foundational support, farmer cultivation provides the talent input, and black soil utilization acts as the resource base. The synergy of these elements translates their respective advantages into effective governance outcomes. The cultivation of high-quality farmers and protection and utilization of black soil are gradually adapting and positively influencing each other in the fields of rural industrial development, ecological protection, talent cultivation, organization construction and culture shaping. Building on the established synergy mechanism, further progress can be achieved through rural industrial innovation, coordinated ecological governance, optimized talent cultivation, organizational restructuring, and cultural preservation. Policy design and implementation should also be adapted according to the stage of rural revitalization to enhance synergistic efficiency.
Socio-spatial differentiation refers to the spatial distribution disparities among social groups with different attributes. Current research mainly focuses on intra-urban residential differentiation and rarely studies the social space at the regional scale, especially in integrated areas. Taking the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) integrated region as the study area and utilizing multi-dimensional, high-precision population attribute data from the Baidu Huiyan big data platform, this study analyzes the structure, characteristics, and mechanisms of socio-spatial differentiation within the region. The findings reveal that: (1) Based on key indicators such as spatial location, resident age, education level, income, and consumption capacity, the YRD can be divided into five distinct social areas. (2) These different social areas form a multi-nested "core-periphery" structure within the YRD, with significant socio-spatial differentiation observed across regions, between provinces, among cities, between urban and rural areas, and within cities. (3) The integration process has failed to promote a balanced distribution of social groups within the region; the socio-spatial differentiation in the YRD is the result of the combined effects of policy orientation, market mechanisms, and social forces. (4) Under the combined effects of endogenous factors, such as disparities in regional economic development levels, and exogenous factors, such as the migration of populations with different skill sets to different types of areas, there is a potential for intensified group differentiation and spatial disparities within the integrated YRD. To promote the balanced development of regional population and resources, it is necessary to explore some measures to achieve cross-regional resource integration and fair allocation, promote the equalization of high-quality public services and residents' living standards, and ultimately reach the goal of high-quality development of social space integration in the YRD.
Realizing the value of grassland resource assets is a critical initiative to harmonize ecological conservation with economic development, fostering sustainable coexistence between humans and grasslands. As an advanced productive force aligned with the future-oriented protection and utilization of grassland resources, new quality productive forces provide essential theoretical and practical foundations for this process. This study employs literature analysis, inductive reasoning, and case study methodologies to systematically elucidate the fundamental logic, operational mechanisms, and key pathways through which new quality productive forces empower the value realization of grassland resource assets. The findings demonstrate that: (1) The three core components of new quality productive forces—new technologies, new factors, and new industries—deliver scientific impetus, diversified strategies, and sustainable safeguards for value realization. (2) Practical challenges in this process are characterized by a tripartite dilemma: low technological conversion rates and gaps in cutting-edge technologies, insufficient participation of new-type factors and barriers to factor integration, and outdated industrial structures with low production efficiency. (3) Critical implementation pathways include: building specialized research teams, addressing technological deficiencies, and establishing industry-academia collaboration platforms; integrating production factors and developing multi-dimensional value systems; modernizing industrial structures, transforming production modes, and optimizing organizational management. This research provides both theoretical guidance and practical frameworks for the scientific management and value realization of grassland resource assets, contributing to the synergistic advancement of ecological civilization construction and socio-economic prosperity in pastoral regions.
The grass-livestock balance system plays an important role in suppressing overloaded grazing and protecting grassland ecology, but it has not fully resolved severe grass-livestock conflicts and grassland degradation in certain regions. Our structural-functional analysis of China's grass-livestock balance system reveals both positive and negative outcomes. Positively, the system has effectively protected grassland ecology and clarified powers, rights, and responsibilities of relevant entities through legal means. Negatively, it has restricted grazing practices, curbed herders' rights, reduced their income, and dampened their motivation to comply, thereby creating negative incentives. An examination of cause and effect shows that the causes lie in the external structural obstacles of the broken normative structure of the grass-livestock balance system and the irrational configuration of the institutional structure, the internal structural obstacles of the excessively long authorization cycle, the imbalance between constraints and incentives, and the limitations of the supervision and monitoring system, as well as the internal and external structural obstacles of the mixing of rewards and subsidies, which inhibit the motivation of the herdsmen. In view of this, the grass-livestock balance system should be improved in conjunction with the prohibition of grazing, rotational grazing, pasture rest, and shelter-feeding, and the incentive, constraint, and livestock-carrying capacity approvals and supervision and monitoring systems should be perfected, so as to establish a reasonable interface between the grass-livestock balance subsidy and the realization of the value of grassland ecological products.
Assessing the effectiveness of subsidies, supervision, and their combined instrument is critical for optimizing grassland eco-compensation policies. However, existing studies face methodological constraints in disentangling these three instruments due to contextual limitations. Leveraging the unique identity of grassland transfer-in herders, this study constructs a quasi-natural experiment using field survey data from 885 herders in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. We employ Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to isolate the independent and synergistic effects of subsidies and supervision on grassland use pressure. Attempts are made to rigorously disentangle causal relationships of policy effects within complex social-ecological systems. Key findings reveal that: Firstly, subsidy instrument reduces grassland use pressure by 2.5299 sheep units per hm2, equivalent to a 77.13% decrease in overgrazing severity. Secondly, supervision instrument decreases grassland use pressure by 1.8866 sheep units per hm2, reducing overgrazing degree by 60.28%. Thirdly, synergistic effects lower grassland use pressure by 2.1791 sheep units per hm2, diminishing overgrazing degree by 66.44%. These results demonstrate that economic incentives outperform supervision constraints, while synergistic effects exceed supervision instrument but remain weaker than subsidy instrument. Finally, the effects of subsidies, supervision and synergy on grassland use pressure reduction are more significant in small grassland scale herders, and the effect decreases in the order of synergy, subsidies and supervision. With different livelihood strategies, subsidies, supervision and synergy are all conducive to grassland use pressure, but synergy and supervision are more effective in non-grazing employment herders, while subsidies have little difference in grassland use pressure between the two groups. Future efforts should respect the phased law of policy implementation, enhance subsidy precision, improve supervision mechanisms and tools, and foster synergistic linkage between subsidies and supervision to achieve policy synergy.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 emphasize the win-win of enhancing agricultural output and promoting the sustainable development of grasslands, propelling research on the impact of agricultural land expansion on grassland systems into a new phase. This article reviews the relevant research trajectory and constructs a conceptual framework for the displacement processes and effects of agricultural and grassland systems within a region. On this basis, it organizes the displacement relationships between agricultural land and grassland systems under different scenarios, analyzes the displacement pathways that achieve a win-win situation for both production and ecology, and summarizes existing win-win models. It also explores the challenges and pathways for future model upgrades. The study finds that, from the perspective of the impact of agricultural land expansion on grassland systems, the entire agricultural system structure includes three subsystems—terrain, plants, and animals—and two fundamental interfaces connecting these subsystems. When the free potential energy of the agricultural land system accumulates to a certain extent, expansion behavior occurs. This leads to geographical spatial displacement with the grassland system and generates a series of impact effects on each subsystem and connecting interface: (1) When agricultural land undergoes inappropriate expansion, its systemic relationship with grassland becomes destructive, characterized by competition and annexation. This is primarily manifested as ecological niche deviation and over-expansion, leading to significant negative impacts. (2) When the expansion parameter of agricultural land is appropriately set, a relationship characterized by differentiation, catalysis, and multi-stability emerges between the agricultural and grassland systems. This leads to complementary spatial functions and matched potential energy, which drives displacement coupling and ultimately achieves a win-win outcome. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the global expansion of agricultural land has been continuing. Most countries have recognized the effects of system displacement and have successively introduced policies and legislation to achieve positive effects and avoid or reverse negative effects. At this stage, some countries have developed coupled win-win models, including mixed cropping, integrated crop and livestock systems, but these models face issues such as small scale, few participants, and limited content, remaining in the early stages of development. Reaching a mature stage still presents practical challenges in policy and management, technology and application, resources and security, and coupling and practice. The future goal is to construct a multi-dimensional, multi-scale, multi-model, and multi-agent coupled grassland-agricultural land displacement system, achieving a global win-win scenario. This can be realized through breakthroughs in policy control, spatial collaboration, technology upgrade/sharing, and multi-stakeholder cooperation, all guided by system coupling theory.
In arid and semi-arid pastoral areas, pastoralism is the most sustainable agro-food system. However, the current grassland degradation caused by overgrazing and climate change has threatened livestock production and herders' livelihood. Exploring the impact and mechanism of land titling on the technical efficiency (TE) of herders can help curb grassland degradation and improve herder livelihoods with institutional arrangements. Based on three periods of panel data of 2014, 2017 and 2020 from field interviews with 299 herder households collected in five sumus and towns in Urad Middle Banner, Inner Mongolia, this study used Stochastic Frontier Analysis to examine the impact of the new round of grassland titling on TE, and explored the impact mechanism using Binary Choice Model and Two-way Fixed Effects Model. The TE analysis showed that titling was associated with higher technical efficiency, as shown by a 0.367 higher mean TE value for confirmed herders compared to unconfirmed ones. The influencing mechanism mainly manifested as direct incentive effect and grassland transfer effect, while the labor migration effect was not significant, i.e., grassland titling could improve TE by motivating herders to adopt more proactive attitudes towards utilizing and transferring grasslands rather than by promoting them to work outside. The study was expected to extend the application of land property rights theory to grassland resource management, thereby providing a theoretical basis for promoting grassland titling in other pastoral areas and a practical reference for enhancing herder efficiency and conserving natural capital through improved institutional arrangements.
Located in inland Northwest China, the Hexi region has a typical arid and semi-arid climate and serves as a vital node in the Belt and Road Initiative. In recent years, global changes and human activities had impacted the sustainable development of both the regional ecosystem and the socio-economy. Grasslands play an important role in sustaining socio-economic development and ecological balance in arid and semi-arid zones, which are essential for providing critical ecosystem services such as water and soil conservation, windbreak and sand fixation, and biodiversity conservation. Grassland coverage serves as a key indicator of regional ecological health. Investigating the spatiotemporal patterns and response mechanisms of grassland coverage in the Hexi region holds significant importance for maintaining ecological balance and regulating regional climate. This study utilized MODIS NDVI time-series data and meteorological records from 2001 to 2022 to conduct multi-scale spatiotemporal analyses of grassland coverage dynamics and their climatic responses. An XGBoost model integrated with CMIP6 dataset was further employed to simulate grassland coverage trends from 2023 to 2050 under different scenarios in the Hexi region. The results showed that: (1) Grassland coverage in the study area showed an overall increasing trend with stable fluctuations. The spatial distribution of grassland coverage exhibited distinct spatial heterogeneity, presenting a pattern of "higher in the southeast and lower in the northwest". Approximately 57.22% of grasslands demonstrated significant improvement, though the sustainability of this trend remains uncertain. (2) Grassland coverage responded differentially to climatic factors, with precipitation showing the highest correlation coefficient. Grasslands in the northwest part of the region were notably influenced by soil moisture. Climate change (CC) and human activities (HA) contributed 27.88% and 72.12% to coverage changes, respectively, indicating HA as the dominant driver. (3) By 2050, annual average grassland coverage is projected to increase under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios but decrease under SSP1-1.9. The SSP2-4.5 scenario is deemed more conducive to grassland development in the Hexi region. These findings provide a scientific basis for ecological restoration and sustainable development in this region. Future research should integrate high-resolution land use data with long-term ecological monitoring to explore the complex response of grassland ecosystems to climate change and human activities. Furthermore, comprehensive assessments of grassland ecosystem services and values should be strengthened. Coupled with long-term field surveys and monitoring in vegetation-sparse and degraded areas, this work will provide critical decision-making support for ecological management and the sustainable use of resources in the Hexi region. The results also help us to scientifically understand the response and feedback between vegetation changes and global change in various natural and human environments.
China's Digital Village Strategy is entering a new phase of comprehensive acceleration. Digital technologies are now deeply integrated into all facets of pastoral systems, from livestock development and herdsmen production to livelihoods and the overall transformation of pastoral areas. Against the macro-backdrop of grassland livestock reduction policies, this paper develops a game payoff matrix from the dual-game perspective of government-herdsmen interactions. This approach facilitates a mathematical analysis of the mechanisms through which digital technology enhances the quality of herd reduction practices. Simultaneously, OLS regression combined with Generalized Propensity Score Matching (GPSM) is applied to survey data from herders in the Ili region of Xinjiang. These methods empirically examine the mechanisms through which digital technology affects livestock reduction quality. The baseline regression results indicate that digital technologies significantly improve the quality of livestock reduction. This improvement is manifested in high efficiency, environmental friendliness, rational regulation, and effective supervision. The GPSM estimation results demonstrate a significant positive effect of digital technology usage intensity on livestock reduction quality, revealing an increasing marginal benefit trend. Mechanism analysis reveals that emotional social networks play a mediating role in the pathway through which digital technologies affect the quality of livestock reduction, while functional social networks do not exhibit a significant influence. Local governments should strengthen cooperative and mutually beneficial relations with herdsmen, thereby promoting the deeper integration and sustainable development of digital technologies in the livestock sector.
Building a modern tourism industry system is an important support for promoting the high-quality, stable, and long-term development of the tourism industry and advancing the construction of a tourism powerhouse. This paper constructs an indicator system for measuring the development level of the modern tourism industry system from the perspectives of fairness, safety, innovation, sustainability, and integration. Using analysis methods such as entropy method, spatial autocorrelation, Markov transition matrix, and panel regression model, this study reveals the spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics, evolution patterns, and influencing factors of the development level of China's modern tourism industry system from 2013 to 2022, and puts forward the development path of promoting and improving China's modern tourism system. The results show that: (1) From 2013 to 2022, China's modern tourism system achieved significant overall development, with a clear regional disparity showing a descending gradient from the eastern, central, northeastern to western regions. (2) China's modern tourism system exhibits spatial heterogeneity in development levels, demonstrating a southeast-to-northwest declining gradient. Generally, it has undergone an intensifying spatial agglomeration process, while locally, it reveals distinct clustering patterns, "high-high" and "low-low" agglomerations. The spatial transition of tourism development levels is influenced by neighboring provincial-level regions (hereafter provinces). Provinces at medium-low, relatively high, and high levels all exhibit an evolutionary pattern of "strengthened by strong neighbors, and resilient despite weak neighbors". (3) Economic development strength, transportation infrastructure, government policy regulation, digital technology level, and the degree of openness to the outside world are significant factors influencing the development level of China's modern tourism industry system. (4) To advance and improve the modern tourism industry system in China, it is essential to adopt strategies, leveraging the radiating effect of developed cities, building a fast-travel and slow-tourism connectivity network, strengthening policy support in key areas, promoting the innovative application of digital technologies, and expanding international openness and cooperation. This approach will position tourism as a new strategic pillar and a distinctive livelihood industry, thereby enhancing public well-being.
While promoting rural economic development, rural tourism also results in ecological imbalance. How to define the connotation of the "production-living-ecological" (PLE) spaces in rural tourism destinations, and clarify their evolution process and mechanism have become key issues that need to be urgently addressed. Based on methods such as in-depth interviews and ArcGIS spatial analysis, this study takes Gaochun district of Nanjing as an example, identifies the PLE spatial patterns across multiple periods, and summarizes their spatial connotations and typical spatial types. The research findings are as follows: (1) In terms of connotation cognition: The functions of land use have changed. It is mainly manifested in the landscaping and leisure-oriented development of production spaces, the sharing and multi-functional development of living spaces, and the commercialization and valuation of ecological spaces, and the trend of land space compounding has become increasingly prominent. (2) In terms of the evolution process: The evolution of PLE spaces generally shows a trend of optimized expansion and strong compounding, with obvious spatial optimization and agglomeration trends. (3) In terms of the evolution mechanism: Based on the schematic diagram of areas with drastic functional changes, land use analysis, and coding results, we analyzed the evolution mechanism. The study found that tourism disturbance, combined with factors like government policy, external capital, market demand, natural resources, resident behavior, and resident preference and attitude, drives the original PLE spaces toward composite and synergistic development. This study, from the micro-perspective of rural tourism destinations, explores the connotation and evolution mechanism of PLE spaces, constructs a theoretical framework suitable for the micro-scale, and enriches the research content related to PLE spaces. It also helps the government clarify spatial forms and type combinations, thereby providing scientific guidance for spatial planning and industrial restructuring in rural tourism destinations, thus contributing to their sustainable development and enhanced spatial governance.
This study systematically investigates the impact of industrial tourism resource development to provide strategic guidance for achieving high-quality urban development in the Third Front regions. From a spatial perspective, it constructs a theoretical framework that elucidates the mechanism through which industrial tourism resource development influences high-quality urban development in these regions. Subsequently, spatial econometric models are applied to empirically assess the direct effects and spatial spillover effects of industrial tourism resource development on high-quality urban development during 2011-2022. The results reveal that: (1) Industrial tourism resource development in the Third Front regions demonstrates an upward trend. Nevertheless, the overall level of development remains relatively low. From a spatial perspective, the development of industrial tourism resources is distinctly characterized by a strong influence from cities with higher administrative status. (2) The level of high-quality urban development in the Third Front regions has steadily increased year by year, and the overall absolute disparity in regional high-quality development has decreased. However, the gap in high-quality development between cities in the Third Front regions has widened, giving rise to a paradoxical situation: overall absolute disparities show a risk of narrowing, while relative disparities between cities are becoming entrenched. From a spatial perspective, high-quality urban development in the Third Front regions exhibits a pattern of higher levels in the southeast and lower levels in the southwest. (3) Industrial tourism resource development directly contributes to the enhancement of high-quality development in local cities. However, industrial tourism resource development does not exhibit significant spatial spillover effects on the high-quality development of adjacent cities. Meanwhile, industrial tourism resource development exhibits varying degrees of direct influence across the dimensions of high-quality urban development, ranked in a descending order as follows: innovation-driven development, livelihood development, green development, and economic development. (4) The impact of industrial tourism resource development on high-quality urban development in the Third Front regions exhibits pronounced regional heterogeneity. The direct effects are more substantial in the western region compared to the central region, and in the northern region relative to the southern region. Notably, industrial tourism resource development in both the western and southern regions generates negative spatial spillover effects on the high-quality development of neighboring cities. In contrast, the eastern region is characterized by indirect effects that are significantly stronger than direct effects.
Urban tourismification serves as a comprehensive indicator of urban modernization transformation and connotative development, as well as a strategic pivot for accelerating industry-city integration and enhancing people's well-being. Using panel data from 108 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2006 to 2023, this study empirically investigates the impact mechanism of urban tourismification on people's well-being by employing two-way fixed effects, mediation effect, panel threshold, and spatial Durbin models. The results indicate that: (1) Urban tourismification significantly enhances people's well-being overall, primarily through industrial structure effects and labor productivity effects. (2) Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the well-being effect of tourismification is more prominent in upstream regions and intermediate-type cities, while city size exerts a negative moderating effect. Threshold regression further confirms a nonlinear characteristic of diminishing marginal benefits. (3) Spatial effects demonstrate complexity: under geographical adjacency and distance matrices, a siphon effect is observed, whereas the spillover effect is not significant under the economic-geographic nested matrix. The spatial impact of urban tourismification follows a differentiated pattern that is "suppression at short distances, enhancement at medium distances, and fluctuation at long distances" as distance varies. This study provides theoretical and empirical evidence for understanding the complex relationship between urban tourismification and people's well-being, offering policy insights for promoting high-quality regional tourism development and urban modernization transformation.
Urban development and construction is a major driver of cultivated land loss. Based on the panel data of 277 prefecture-level cities from 2000 to 2022, this paper employs spatio-temporal analysis to reveal the evolving relationship between urbanization and the "trinity" protection of cultivated land. Furthermore, it utilizes a two-way fixed effect model to empirically analyze the total and sub-effects of urbanization on this protection framework. It also explores the differences in the impact effects from the perspective of land, population and economic urbanization. The results show that: (1) During the study period, the urbanization level of all cities increased annually. Spatially, the distribution exhibited a distinct pattern characterized by higher levels in the east than in the west, continuous development along the coast versus isolated growth points for inland areas, and higher concentrations in provincial capitals compared to other cities. The level of cultivated land "trinity" protection shows an inverted N-shaped fluctuation over time, while its spatial pattern evolved from an initial unipolar pattern structure to a north-south dual-core configuration. The cold spots of the two clusters always coincide highly in the western region, while their hot spot clusters exhibit a dynamic seesaw relationship in space. (2) Urbanization exerts a significant overall negative impact on the "trinity" protection of cultivated land. Specifically, it leads to a reduction in both the quantity and quality of cultivated land. (3) Land urbanization leads to a decline in the level of cultivated land "trinity" protection, while, in contrast, population urbanization enhances it. (4) The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the negative impact of urbanization on the "trinity" protection of cultivated land is significantly stronger in major grain-producing areas and in cities with more favorable natural conditions for farming. Within the context of high-quality development, our findings offer theoretical and empirical support for advancing new urbanization and strengthening comprehensive cultivated land protection.
Previous research has predominantly analyzed the drivers of greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural production stage, while fewer studies have conducted a life-cycle analysis of carbon emission drivers in the agri-food system from both production and consumption perspectives. This study, utilizing data from the FAO database, National Bureau of Statistics, and the Global Environment Multi-Regional Input-Output model, constructed a database of carbon emissions from China's agri-food system at both the production and consumption ends from 1990 to 2022. Building on this, the research comprehensively applied the Tapio decoupling model and the LMDI model to analyze the driving factors of carbon emissions in China's agri-food system over the past 30+ years from this dual perspective. The results show that after 2015, a significant turning point emerged in the agri-food system's carbon emissions. Concurrently, the decoupling status of carbon emissions from economic growth shifted from weak decoupling to strong decoupling. Economic development level was identified as the primary driving factor for emissions, accounting for over 90% of the cumulative contribution. From the production end: The decline in carbon emissions per unit of output value was the most significant emission reduction factor, contributing approximately 78% historically. However, in recent years, the declining share of the agri-food system's output value resulting from industrial restructuring has become the key driver of emission reduction, contributing over 50%. From the consumption end: Historically, factors promoting emission reduction included rising food prices, declining Engel's coefficient, decreasing share of household consumption, falling carbon emissions per unit of food consumption, and a decreasing final consumption rate. Among these, the reduction in carbon emissions per unit of food consumption has become the most important factor, accounting for 31.43% during 2018-2021. A dual strategy targeting both the production and consumption ends should be implemented. This can be achieved by optimizing the agri-food supply chain and promoting its green transformation through measures such as green technology R&D, industrial structure optimization, and supportive policy guidance.
New quality productive forces (NQPF), which integrates new factors, models, and efficiency gains, emerges as a new paradigm for resolving the developmental challenges faced by resource-based cities. This study employs a Super-SBM model incorporating undesirable outputs to measure the industrial transformation level of China's resource-based cities from 2008 to 2023, using green development efficiency as the core indicator. Utilizing a panel regression model, it investigates the mechanisms through which new quality factors—such as technological innovation, high-quality talent, and intelligent equipment—drive industrial transformation in these cities. The research findings reveal that: (1) New quality factors drive industrial transformation through dual pathways: revitalizing existing industries and fostering substitute industries, with the latter demonstrating a stronger effect. (2) Factor-driven empowerment exhibits significant heterogeneity: coal-dependent cities prioritize talent-driven strategies, while low-income cities rely more heavily on technological innovation. (3) Both pollution case penalties and technical funding support can regulate the mechanism by which new quality factors indirectly affect industrial transformation. Based on these findings, the study proposes three pathways for resource-based cities to leverage new quality factors: expanding the penetration scope of highly versatile factors, dismantling barriers to highly specialized factors, and establishing tailored factor empowerment strategies. This research provides a scientific foundation and policy references for tailoring new quality elements to local conditions to advance industrial transformation.
