Carbon emissions induced by land use and land cover change amid rapid urbanization in Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, China: efficiency, transfer and process

To better reveal the regional differences in carbon emissions induced by LUCC, the concept of LUCC-induced carbon emissions efficiency (LCEE) was developed, and an analytical framework for its measurement, transfer characteristics, and driving process was built in this study. Taking Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle (CCEC) as example, this study indicated that the total carbon emissions rose by approximately 143%. Specifically, indirect carbon emissions from built-up land accounted for nearly 94%. The LCEE of the CCEC fluctuates significantly, and the "club convergence" effect between regions is obvious, the LCEE transition is more likely to occur at lower levels, while at higher levels, efficiency transition is more difficult to achieve due to the polarized development pattern. Through the construction of the Panel Vector Autoregressive model, the "club convergence" effect is further proven. This study shows that changes in LCEE are more driven by internal factors (54.33%), the contributions of composition effect and technique effect to changes in LCEE are relatively high (19.98% and 19.39%, respectively), with scale effect being less influential.