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Arid Land Geography ›› 2026, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (6): 1238-1248.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2025.272

• New Quality Productive Forces • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Empowering effect of new quality productive forces on urban green development in the Yellow River Basin

MA Xiaowen1(), GUO Jingjun1,2(), XIE Yan1,3   

  1. 1 School of Statistics and Data Science, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics, Lanzhou 730020, Gansu, China
    2 Center for Quantitative Analysis of Gansu Economic Development, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics, Lanzhou 730020, Gansu, China
    3 School of Information Engineering and Artificial Intelligence, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics, Lanzhou 730020, Gansu, China
  • Received:2025-05-13 Revised:2025-06-24 Online:2026-06-25 Published:2026-06-29
  • Contact: GUO Jingjun E-mail:scomaomao@163.com;guojj@lzufe.edu.cn

Abstract:

New quality productive forces inherently embody green productivity and serve as a key driver of regional green transformation and high-quality development. Using 76 cities in the Yellow River Basin as the research sample, this study systematically analyzes the spatiotemporal evolution of new quality productive forces from 2012 to 2022. By constructing fixed effects, mediation, and threshold regression models, the study explores the mechanisms through which these forces influence urban green development. The main findings indicate that: (1) The overall level of new quality productive forces in the Yellow River Basin cities remains relatively low, displaying a four-tier gradient pattern “leading-growing-catching-up-emerging”. The spatial structure has shifted from “point-based leadership” to “belt-shaped agglomeration”. (2) New quality productive forces significantly enhance urban green development, although effects vary across regions and city types—downstream areas and non-resource-based cities experience the most pronounced benefits. (3) Green technological innovation, industrial structure upgrading, and energy structure optimization serves as the primary pathways for these effects. (4) Environmental regulation and economic agglomeration exert nonlinear moderating effects. Specifically, environmental regulation demonstrates a double-threshold effect, while economic agglomeration exhibits a single-threshold effect. These results provide valuable policy guidance for advancing the localized development of new quality productive forces, refining regional strategies, and promoting green transformation and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin.

Key words: environmental regulation, economic agglomeration, new quality productive forces, urban green development, Yellow River Basin