Spatio-Temporal Differentiation Characteristics and Determinants of Coupling Coordination Degree in Technological Innovation-Industrial Upgrading-Ecological Environment System: a Case Study of Jiangsu Province, China

During the past few years, the accelerating development of economy has caused great crisis on ecological environment. The scarcity of natural resources and deterioration of environment exert harmful influence on regional sustainable development. This study aims to find the method to realize the regional coordinated development from the perspective of technological innovation (TI), industrial upgrading (IU) and ecological environment (EE) as well as their interactions. The coupling coordination model is applied to calculate the coupling coordination degree (CCD) in technological innovation industrial upgrading-ecological environment system (TIES). Additionally, the geo-detector, a robust spatial statistics approach, is used to explore the determinants of CCD. It is found that the level of CCD is in the stage of mild imbalance during the study period. In terms of time series, it presents a slight growth with fluctuation from 0.329 to 0.354. Spatially, southern Jiangsu is in the mild imbalance stage and the coupling coordination characteristic transforms from "IU lagged" to "EE lagged". Conversely, middle and northern Jiangsu are basic imbalance with "TI lagged". We also find that the superposition of two factors in TIES can obtain a "enhance, bilinear" even "enhance, nonlinear" effect.