Study on the spatial differentiation of environmental governance performance of Yangtze river urban agglomeration in Jiangsu province of China

Although the rapid development of urbanization improves the global economy, it causes environmental pollution enormously. Therefore, it is imperative to investigate the impact of urban agglomeration on the environment. For this purpose, the Yangtze river urban agglomeration in the Jiangsu province of China is taken as the study area to explore the performance of environmental governance. The pressure-state-response model was used to build the evaluation framework. The principal component analysis was applied to assess the environmental governance performance. Moreover, the spatial differentiation of environmental governance performance was analyzed in combination with the Moran Index (MI). The results revealed that the environmental governance performance of the Yangtze river urban agglomeration from 2012 to 2016 has generally improved, and the gap among cities remained significant. Moreover, the environmental governance performance of Nanjing and Zhenjiang remained at the top. Although Nantongs' comprehensive performance has significant progress in the past five years, it is still at a low level because the previous development methods caused enormous damages to the environment. There is the certain spatial aggregation of environmental governance performance among urban agglomeration. Results also found that the high-performance city was surrounded by a high level of environmental governance performance and vice versa. The results stress the enactment of improved environmental regulations to overcome the situation of environmental pollution. Particularly, strong coordination between environmental protection and resource exploitation is required regarding developing a policy framework.