Unraveling the dynamics, heterogeneity, determinants of eco-efficiency in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, China

Eco-efficiency has been considered a valuable gauge for evaluating how efficient economic activities are in regard to resource inputs and eco-environmental pressures. Even though Ecosystem services (ESs) are inseparable from sustainable eco-environment, a paucity of literature has considered ESs in eco-efficiency research lines. Therefore, this study aims to construct a novel eco-efficiency evaluation framework by integrating ESs as natural capital input and measure it utilizing the Epsilon-based measure model for the county-level cities in Beijing Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration (BTHUA) during the period 2005-2015. The spatial econometric technique is further performed to acquire quantitative evidence about whether ESs and other determinants impact eco-efficiency. The results revealed that eco-efficiency increased continuously in the whole BTHUA and BTHUA's optimized development functional areas, whereas eco-efficiency of BTHUA's sub-regions showed a significant temporal diversity. The average eco-efficiency values of cities in key development functional areas and restricted development functional areas showed the V-shaped trend (declining before 2010 and then rising). Interestingly, this study found that ESV economic loss may result in eco-efficiency decline for cities located in key development functional areas. From the spatial heterogeneity perspective, the city with high EE is mainly located in eastern BTHUA, whereas cities in the northern plateau areas, southwestern, and western BTHUA have relatively low EE. Furthermore, there existed a significant spatial autocorrelation and a spatial agglomeration heterogeneity, which suggests that the low-low correlation regions gradually being the most dominant spatial pattern. The results of spatial econometric model verified that water yield has the strongest positive effect on EE while soil erosion will lead to declining EE. This paper potentially provides new insights for future policy design of urban agglomeration sustainable deployment.