Temporal and Spatial Evolution and Driving Mechanism of Urban Ecological Welfare Performance from the Perspective of High-Quality Development: A Case Study of Jiangsu Province, China

Based on the concept of high-quality development, this paper constructs an urban ecological welfare evaluation framework, measures the urban ecological welfare performance in Jiangsu Province from 2005 to 2019 using a stochastic frontier production function model, and conducts a spatial and temporal divergence feature analysis, combining a spatial panel econometric model and a threshold panel regression model to explore the spatial effects and mechanisms of urban ecological welfare performance. The results show that: (1) The urban ecological welfare performance in Jiangsu province has been increasing every year, and the spatial divergence between north and south is significant, with the overall trend of southern Jiangsu > central Jiangsu > northern Jiangsu. (2) The differences in urban ecological welfare performance among the three regions are gradually decreasing, with the high values expanding and the low values decreasing, and the urban ecological welfare performance in northern Jiangsu Province is gradually approaching that in southern Jiangsu Province, and the urban ecological welfare performance level tends to be balanced. (3) There are significant negative spillover effects of industrial structure, city scale, and economic development level on urban ecological welfare performance, as well as significant threshold effects of innovation level, industrial structure, foreign trade dependence, and economic development, and significant differences in the degree of influence of urbanization on urban ecological welfare performance under different threshold variables. (4) The urbanization and economic development levels are the fundamental factors driving urban ecological welfare performance improvement. Industrial structure optimization, city scale, technological innovation, and foreign trade dependence positively contribute to urban welfare performance, and government financial pressure constrains the performance level improvement. In the future, a long-term mechanism for high-quality green development should be constructed, spatial spillover channels should be continuously improved, welfare thresholds should be effectively circumvented, and urban ecological welfare performance should be promoted in a concerted manner.