“Resource Conservation” or “Environmental Friendliness”: How do Urban Clusters Affect Total-Factor Ecological Performance in China?

Urban clusters are important carriers for cities to participate in international competition and cooperation, and a booster for urban sustainable development. This study measured the degree of urban clusters by utilizing the panel data of 278 cities in China during 2004–2016. Then, an extended meta-frontier data envelopment analysis (EM-DEA) model was applied to estimate the total-factor ecological performance (UTEP) and decompose it into two sub-index from the perspective of “resource conservation” and “environmental friendliness”. On these bases, we employed a dynamic panel data approach to examine and demonstrate the relationship between urban cluster and UTEP in two dimensions, and further explored transmission channels of urban clusters on UTEP by adding the mediating effect. The results show that resource conservation increases first and then decreases with the increasing of urban clustering level, while environmental friendliness showed the opposite trend, making the latter become the main way for urban clusters to improve the UTEP. Industrial structure supererogation and rationalization are transmission channels for environmental friendliness rather than resource conservation in the way of improvement of UTEP. Technology innovation, as well as technology diffusion, also improves UTEP to some extent. In addition, urban clusters in eastern and central China have the greatest improvement in UTEP, while such effects are not the case in western China. Urban clusters in the second half sample period are more conducive to the improvement of the UTEP, with these potentially being the gains from the improvement of the level and quality of urban clusters.