Coordination or imbalance? Understanding the relationship between economic resilience and ecological resilience in Hunan Province

Abstract

The transition from conflict to harmonious coexistence between economy and environment has consistently garnered significant attention. Particularly in the current era where uncertainty and risk have become prevalent themes, the coordination of economic resilience (EnR) and ecological resilience (ElR) remains a critically important and unresolved topic of discussion. We innovatively measure EnR and ElR from the dimensions of “resistance-absorption-renewal ability” based on evolutionary resilience theory and further investigate these concepts through the application of coupling coordination degree (CCD), relative development degree, and optimal parameters-based geographical detector methods. The result shows: The spatiotemporal distribution of EnR and ElR in Hunan Province exhibits regional specificity, with weak resilience and strong resilience areas presenting clustered distributions, showing clear east-west hierarchical patterns. The CCD falls between 0.27 and 0.66, predominantly in an antagonistic state, with a noticeable upward trend. Changsha and Huaihua are the cities with the highest and lowest CCD, respectively. Hunan Province has the most cities with ecological resilience lag types, followed by the systematic balanced type. Public environmental attention (PEA), technological innovation (TI), infrastructure (IC), and social welfare (SW) are the dominant factors influencing the CCD of EnR and ElR. The explanatory power of most interaction terms exceeds that of single factors, with the majority being in the bivariate enhancement type, accounting for 86.7 %. This study contributes by expanding traditional economic-ecological research into a resilience perspective, offering insights for achieving coupling coordination amidst uncertainty.