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Arid Land Geography ›› 2026, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (9): 1951-1964.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2025.575

• Regional Development • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Multiple paths for the governance of agricultural production water footprint in Xinjiang from the configurational perspective

JIANG Zhihui(), JU Huiqi(), OUYANG Jinqiong, SU Xufeng   

  1. School of Economics and Management, Tarim University, Aral 843300, Xinjiang, China
  • Received:2025-09-19 Revised:2025-11-20 Online:2026-09-25 Published:2026-09-07
  • Contact: JIANG Zhihui E-mail:jiangzhihui78@163.com;17857687116@163.com

Abstract:

Water resources are crucial for the sustained development of oasis agriculture in arid regions. To resolve the complex dilemmas of structural shortages and inefficient use of agricultural water resources in Xinjiang, this study calculates the production water footprint of three crops (cotton, corn, and wheat) in 14 prefectures and cities in Xinjiang, China, from 2012 to 2024, identifies five types of influencing factors through the logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition method, and identifies configurational paths for reducing the intensity of agricultural production water footprint and their spatiotemporal heterogeneity through dynamic qualitative comparative analysis (dynamic QCA). The results show that: (1) The average agricultural production water footprint across Xinjiang first increased and then decreased over time, reaching a peak of 8.810 m3·kg-1 in 2016; spatially, it was higher in the southeast and lower in the northwest, with the average value in Turpan City as high as 25.609 m3·kg-1, 11.8 times that of Altay Prefecture. (2) Technological progress, cropping structure, water-saving effects, management level, and agricultural economic development level are important factors in the intensity of agricultural production water footprint in Xinjiang and exhibit significant changes over time. In particular, the driving effects of management level and technological progress have gradually evolved from exerting partial positive effects to pan-regional inhibitory effects. (3) The equivalent paths for reducing the intensity of agricultural production water footprint in Xinjiang are the technology-cropping-structure dual-driving type, water-saving-management collaborative type, technology-led type, and management-cropping-structure dual-driving type. (4) All configurations demonstrate significant spatial heterogeneity: Regions with better agricultural foundations have significantly more configurational paths than those with weak foundations. In the future, spatiotemporally adaptive governance strategies based upon the resource endowments and development stages of each region should be implemented to reduce the agricultural production water footprint in Xinjiang.

Key words: agricultural production water footprint, LMDI model, dynamic QCA, configurational paths, Xinjiang