Spatial assessment of China's green governance efficiency in the period of high-quality development

Green governance is an essential driver for the restructuring of economic development and realizing a green technological revolution. The article explores the efficiency of China's green governance and the characteristics of its spatial pattern from 2008 to 2018 through the construction of a generalized panel three-stage DEA (data envelopment analysis) model, using spatial autocorrelation model, spatial gravity model, and social network analysis, in response to the strategic goal of optimizing national governance capacity and regional linkage development. Based on the social network of green governance efficiency under the network topology, the study summarizes the status and role of each provincial region in green governance and finds that: The efficiency of green governance in China's provinces shows a U-shaped characteristic, with non-managerial factors in the external environment obscuring the true efficiency of green governance. The technological environment eliminates redundancy in green governance inputs, but the economic and financial environment expands the scale of redundancy in some input factors. China has formed a "three horizontal and two vertical grid-type" green governance spatial correlation framework, and the radiation effect of key provincial areas will lead to the improvement of overall green governance efficiency.