1. Introduction
The rapid growth of China’s economy is accompanied by intensified environmental pollution [
1,
2] and unbalanced regional development [
3]. The economic growth model at the cost of environmental pollution enhances human economic well-being and reduces environmental well-being from sustainable development [
4], harming overall human well-being. In the new era, China’s economy has entered the stage of high-quality development [
5] and promoting people’s well-being has become the fundamental purpose of development. Thus, China must explore a high-quality development path that synergizes economic and social development with environmental protection, shifting its focus from improving people’s economic well-being to enhancing their overall well-being. Therefore, simultaneously building a well-being performance evaluation system that can characterize economic, social, and environmental (i.e., ecological well-being performance (EWP)) elements is crucial to improve people’s comprehensive well-being with the minimum consumption of resources. Most existing studies have been conducted to measure a country’s well-being level or region from economic well-being and social well-being, but many of them do not focus on the comprehensive well-being that includes economic, social, and environmental elements. How to coordinate the relationship among economic growth, social development, and environmental protection and seek a new way of high-quality development based on low consumption, low pollution, and high well-being has become a vital issue in China’s current economic and social development. The quantitative measurement of regional differences in EWP is an essential reference for promoting high-quality, coordinated regional development in China. Furthermore, based on measuring EWP, exploring the influencing factors of EWP can also provide possible suggestions for China to develop differentiated strategies to improve EWP.
Maximizing comprehensive well-being is an inevitable choice to achieve sustainable development [
6], and the scarcity of natural capital has become an essential factor limiting human development [
7]. The focus of attention is how to deal with the relationship among resource consumption, economic growth, and well-being improvement within the ecological boundary [
8]. To achieve the win–win goal of coordinating economic and social development with environmental protection and human well-being improvement, assessing the level of EWP is crucial. The concept of EWP was first introduced by Daly (1974) [
9] to assess the efficiency of natural consumption for enhancing well-being. EWP reflects the degree of harmony between the relative changes in human well-being improvement and ecological resource consumption. Assessing EWP for coordinating economic, social, and environmental development and well-being improvement has become the focus of government and economic and environmental researchers [
10]. In addition, exploring the sources and influencing factors of regional differences in EWP is necessary to provide a reference for promoting coordinated regional development and improving EWP.
This study aims to construct a comprehensive and objective EWP evaluation index system and measure the EWP of 30 provinces in China by using the Super-SBM model. It helps grasp the current situation of EWP in China, deepen people’s understanding of EWP, and promote sustainable economic and social development. Moreover, an in-depth analysis of the spatial unbalance of EWP is conducted, and its sources of difference can clarify the policy focus points for promoting the formation of regional synergistic development patterns in the future. Finally, the driving factors of EWP are analyzed to explore the paths to enhance EWP. This study has theoretical and practical significance for the sustainable development of China’s economy and society. It provides a reference for other countries to quantitatively evaluate EWP and improve the unbalanced EWP.
2. Literature Review
The economic system is a subsystem of the ecosystem [
11], and the ecological boundary constrains the expansion of the economic system. Human beings have changed from an “empty world,” where artificial capital is relatively scarce, to a “full world,” where natural capital is scarce. In a “full world,” the constraint of resources and environment on economic growth is becoming increasingly apparent, and the development of society must be achieved within the ecological carrying capacity [
12]. It belongs to the category of strong, sustainable development. The traditional pursuit of economic performance based on the consumption of ecological resources, that is, eco-efficiency, still belongs to weak sustainable development [
13]. In contrast to weak sustainability, strong sustainability emphasizes the non-decreasing nature of key natural capital and argues that man-made capital cannot wholly replace natural capital [
14]. Based on the theory of strong sustainability, social development must increase the comprehensive well-being level, including economic, social, and environmental well-being with the least possible ecological resource consumption under the ecological threshold constraint, that is, improving EWP. It also realizes the change from a material-based view of pursuing ecological efficiency to a human-centered view of development pursuing EWP. We established an analytical framework (
Figure 1) for EWP based on the article by Zang et al. (2013) [
13].
The concept of EWP was first proposed by Daly (1974), who defined the low entropy resources consumed, high entropy waste released to the environment as throughput, the utility or well-being obtained from the ecosystem as service, and the ratio of service to throughput to characterize the efficiency of resource consumption into well-being level [
9]. However, Daly did not propose specific indicators to quantify service volume and throughput, making the concept of EWP not widely applied.
Well-being maximization is a socially accepted goal, and GDP is often used as a proxy for the relative efficiency of an economy. However, using the amount of GDP as a measure of a country or region has been highly controversial [
15,
16]. From the perspective of EWP, GDP also covers its economic dimension only. The Human Development Index (HDI) [
17] proposed by the United Nations Development Program in 1990 has extended the well-being indicator from the economic dimension to the social dimension and enabled the quantification of well-being levels. However, all high-level countries have unsustainable ecological impacts, and no indicators cover ecological sustainability in HDI calculation [
18]. In addition to HDI, happy life years [
16], life expectancy at birth [
19], and sustainable economic well-being index [
20] are also used as indicators of well-being levels. They go beyond GDP to measure the utility that people derive from ecosystems. Regardless of the indicator used to measure the level of well-being, in addition to economic growth, social and environmental issues should be considered, including education, health, and environmental variables [
21].
Rees (1992) introduced the concept of ecological footprint to quantify natural consumption in 1992 [
22]. According to Wackernagel and Rees (1998) [
23], the ecological footprint is calculated from six types of land area, and this method calculates the size of resources that humans obtain from ecosystems. The ecological footprint can measure the natural consumption of a country or region over a certain period. For example, Haberl et al. (2001) calculated and explored the ecological footprint of Austria in 1926–1995 [
24], Mcdonald and Patterson (2004) calculated the ecological footprint of the Auckland region using input–output analysis [
25], and Yin et al. (2017) calculated the ecological footprint of five provinces in northwest China in 2005–2014 and compared it with the regional development capacity [
26]. The materials and energy provided by the ecosystem are the material basis of a region’s development. Economic and social development is achieved through labor and capital input while exporting waste to the environment [
16]. Therefore, when evaluating the EWP of a country or region, elements such as labor and capital, which achieve resource utilization, must be considered. An ecological footprint is only a tool for evaluating the state of environmental stress in a region [
27], and its calculation formula does not include the inputs of labor and capital. EWP is a concept covering economic, social, and environmental dimensions and is a complex system with multiple inputs and outputs. The input must cover resource consumption and labor and capital elements to achieve resource utilization [
28].
Studies on EWP have emerged after quantifying “service volume” and “throughput” (
Table 1). It is mainly manifested in the following three aspects. Firstly, ecological well-being performance (EWP) is measured and analyzed. Measuring EWP has two main approaches. The first is based on the ratio of social well-being to the ecological footprint or resource consumption. For example, Abdallah et al. (2009) defined the ratio of the happy life index to ecological footprint as the Happy Planet Index and used it to measure sustainable development in 143 countries [
29]. Zhang et al. (2018) constructed an EWP model using the ratio of HDI to ecological footprint and measured the EWP of countries with a population of 10 million or more [
30]. The second one is based on the Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Dietz et al. (2009) used SFA to measure the well-being performance of 135 countries [
31]. Bian et al. (2020) measured the EWP of 30 provincial capitals in China by Super-SBM model and found that the EWP showed a spatial distribution pattern of the firm in the east and a weak one in the west [
32]. Ibrahim et al. (2021) measured the socio-ecological efficiency of sub-Saharan African countries using the DEA approach [
33]. Yao et al. (2021) assessed the EWP of 30 Chinese provinces through the Super-SBM model and analyzed the spatial correlation of eco-well-being performance through the Moran index [
3]. Second, regional differences in EWP are investigated. Wang and Feng (2020) calculate the Theil index for three regions in China and find that interregional differences contribute the most to the overall differences [
34]. Li et al. (2020) analyzed ecological total factor productivity in China and find spatial convergence [
1]. Third, the influencing factors of EWP are explored. Zhang et al. (2020) apply a panel data model to investigate the influencing factors of ecological consumption [
35].
Existing studies provide theoretical and methodological references for this study but still have room for improvement in the following three aspects. First, in constructing the evaluation index system of EWP, the existing studies only consider the resource consumption on the input side but ignore the capital and labor factors that transform resource consumption into objective well-being levels. Second, studies have shown significant regional differences in EWP in China [
34,
36]. However, most of the studies on EWP are focused on the intuitive comparison of efficiency, and studies on the quantitative measurement of the degree of regional differences and the sources of regional differences are few. Finally, the studies on the factors influencing EWP are mainly based on regression models, revealing the overall influence of explanatory variables on EWP. However, they do not consider temporal and spatial factors, thus making the regression results possibly biased and unable to analyze the direction and magnitude of the influence of each explanatory variable on provinces’ EWP.
The marginal contributions of this study are as follows. First, this study comprehensively constructs an EWP evaluation system in China. Comprehensive well-being is characterized by economic, social, and environmental dimensions, and environmental pollution is characterized through wastewater, waste gas, industrial solid waste, and carbon emissions. The EWP of 30 Chinese provinces is measured quantitatively using the Super-SBM model. Second, China’s regional unbalance of EWP is measured and analyzed from four regions and eight regions using a combination of Theil index and Dagum Gini coefficient, revealing the sources of regional difference in EWP in China. Third, this study analyzes the drivers of EWP using a geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model innovatively, calculates the direction and magnitude of the influence of each explanatory variable on EWP, and reveals the spatial differences in the magnitude of their influence.
The construction of an evaluation index system for EWP breaks through the limitations of the traditional use of GDP to measure economic and social development status and provides a reference for other countries or regions to measure EWP levels. It also studies the regional differences in EWP, reveals the sources of their regional differences, explores the driving factors of EWP, and comprehensively examines the unbalanced status of regional EWP. Formulating strategies for differentiated improvement of regional EWP and promoting coordinated regional development are crucial.
5. Discussion
The GDP measure of economic development is a standard and valid indicator, but it has been used unilaterally as a more general measure of well-being [
55,
56]. The single-minded pursuit of GDP growth does not lead to sustained improvements in human well-being, and the rate of improvement in human well-being begins to stagnate or decrease when economic growth reaches a certain point [
57,
58]. Academics have been searching for indicators that can accurately and comprehensively measure human well-being, and the HDI, the Real Progress Index, and the Happy Planet Index have been proposed one after another. However, researchers’ perspectives and purposes differ, and the specific indicators proposed have different focuses. Economic, social, and environmental factors significantly affect people’s well-being, and constructing a well-being indicator evaluation system that covers economic, social, and environmental dimensions to measure a country or region’s well-being development level is more comprehensive. EWP is a multidimensional concept involving economic, social, and environmental factors consistent with sustainable development. This study constructed a performance evaluation index system that can characterize economic, social, and environmental well-being. EWP measures the efficiency of well-being transformation in a country or region.
The measurement of EWP in 30 provinces by the Super-SBM model revealed that the level of economic development is not a decisive factor in determining the level of ecological well-being. Bian et al.’s article verified the same conclusion, justifying the inclusion of social and environmental well-being in the EWP evaluation system in this study [
32]. The existence of a “welfare threshold” proves that increasing inputs does not promote sustainable growth in well-being. For example, the excessive demand for nature is causing the United States to suffer an ecological deficit, which inevitably impacts the improvement of people’s well-being [
27].
EWP is characterized by significant regional unbalance, and studies have found that inter-regional differences are the primary source of overall differences [
34] and reducing inter-regional differences has become a key consideration for current policy formulation. Breaking through the administrative barriers between regions and building inter-regional cooperation mechanisms are worthy of crucial exploration. Differences in resource endowments are the main reason for the inconsistent direction of industrial development in each region. Making full use of the region’s resource endowments, strengthening the interaction between institutions, such as industry, university, and other institutes [
59], forming comparative advantages related to the region’s characteristic resources by taking advantage of the situation, and putting the concept of regional innovation system into practice are important ways to reduce inter-regional differences in EWP.
The purpose of high-quality economic development is to meet the growing needs of the people for a better life [
5] in terms of income, education, health care, the environment, poverty, and other aspects [
60]. High-quality economic development meets the requirements of sustainable development and the requirement to improve people’s well-being. High-quality economic development is indeed a viable path to achieve improved EWP. On the one hand, it takes advantage of innovation-driven economic growth to promote the efficient conversion of resources and low entropy emissions. On the other hand, it takes full advantage of big data to explore the needs that can improve people’s quality of life. Furthermore, differentiated strategies to improve EWP need to be developed for different regions. For the northern coastal regions, Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei’s integrated development should continue to be strengthened, with emphasis on increasing environmental management. Attention should be paid to the environmental problems brought by urbanization for the northeastern region while attracting foreign investment. For the eastern coastal regions, controlling the scale of foreign direct investment is the key to improving regional EWP. For the middle Yellow River, the middle Yangtze River, and the southern coast, the key to improving EWP lies in adjusting the industrial structure, promoting the modernization of manufacturing industries and services, breaking down regional administrative barriers, and promoting coordinated development linkages among cities. For the northwest region, attracting foreign investment, playing the secondary industry’s role in promoting EWP, raising the level of urbanization, and improving people’s overall well-being are urgently needed. For the southwest region, improving the efficiency of water resources utilization is necessary.
6. Conclusions
This study used the Super-SBM model, Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition, and GTWR methods to investigate EWP, regional differences, and influencing factors in China. The EWP evaluation system constructed in this study is comprehensive and objective and involves various economic and social development aspects. The measurement of EWP in China can provide theoretical support for policy formulation, accurately grasp the current situation of EWP in China, and lay the foundation for formulating differentiated strategies to improve EWP. We analyzed the regional differences in EWP in China and discussed how to promote coordinated regional development. In this research, the factors influencing EWP were analyzed, and possible suggestions for improving regional EWP were provided. However, the study has some limitations, as the well-being indicators selected are all objective. At the same time, subjective well-being indicators are also important factors influencing well-being. Therefore, the integration of objective and subjective well-being indicators and the inclusion of inequality and poverty into the EWP evaluation index system are two of the directions for future research on EWP. Another research direction is the use of system dynamics to explore EWP in depth. The findings are as follows.
First, the EWP of 30 provinces declined slightly from 1997 to 2018. However, the overall degree of difference in EWP has also decreased, and the problem of regional unbalance has improved. China’s EWP shows prominent spatially unbalanced characteristics, with the highest EWP in the east, the lowest in the northeast, and intermediate in the central and western regions. Among the eight regions, the southern coast is far ahead of other regions, whereas the EWP of the northwest region is at the bottom of the eight regions.
Second, inter-regional differences are the primary source of regional differences in EWP in China. The internal differences in EWP of the four regions and the eight regions in China have been decreasing from 1997 to 2018, and the contribution of inter-regional differences to the overall differences has been increasing. The key to narrowing the development gap of EWP in China and promoting coordinated regional development in the future lies in controlling and narrowing inter-regional differences.
Third, urbanization has a significant positive effect on improving EWP in China, with significant heterogeneity in the effects of the degree of openness, industrial structure, environmental regulation, market level, and water endowment on EWP in different regions.