Abstract
Whether cities can attain a win-win situation with simultaneous environmental protection and economic growth is a compelling issue in current urban development. It will be of great practical significance to comprehensively evaluate the implementation effect of the multi-dimensional goals of an urban development from the perspective of a green total factor productivity (GTFP) evaluation. The paper places pollution reduction and carbon reduction into the research framework of GTFP, introduces the SBM-DDF model to evaluate the urban GTFP of 58 cities in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) from 2006 to 2020, and employs the panel regression model to empirically study the factors influencing the urban GTFP of the region. The results are obtained as follows: (1) from the perspective of time range, the urban GTFP in the basin displays an evolutionary trend of first declining and then mounting, demonstrating the highest GTFP in the downstream, the second-highest in the midstream and the lowest in the upstream; (2) regarding the spatial distribution characteristics, the urban GTFP in the basin presents obvious spatial differences, showing the regional differences by increasing from the upstream to the downstream; (3) from the perspective of the whole basin, the advancement of economic development, urbanization processes, environmental regulations and the ecological background have significantly positive effects in improving the urban GTFP, while the improvement of the industrial structure, opening-up and energy intensity affects the urban GTFP of the basin negatively; and (4) from the perspective of the regional heterogeneity of the effects of the various influencing factors, the improvement of the opening-up and industrial structure expedites the growth of the urban GTFP of the downstream, the advancement of urbanization process restrains the urban GTFP in the upstream and the impact of the ecological background on the urban GTFP in different regions is relatively complex. This study is of great importance to improve the urban GTFP and boost the high-quality development of the cities in the basin.