Evaluation of the protection effectiveness of national key ecological functional area based on land use and ecosystem service value

With the rapid economic development and urban expansion, there has been a growing trend of ecological land being converted into non-ecological land. In order to mitigate this issue and improve the environment, the concept of national key ecological functional areas (NKEFA) has been implemented, and it is of great importance to assess the effectiveness of NKEFA in terms of land use and ecosystem services. Taking Chongqing City in China as a case study, this research utilizes remote sensing technology to analyze land use change and measure the ecosystem service value (ESV), and the NKEFA in Chongqing is regarded as a quasi-natural experiment to evaluate the protection effect on ecosystem services. Firstly, the results show that dynamic degree of that building land is the highest, with a value of 12.55% between 2010 and 2020, which is mainly due to the conversion of cultivated land into building land, and other land types transferred into building land are mainly concentrated in the southwest region of Chongqing; the dynamic degree of forest land and waters in NKEFAs is greater compared to Non-NKEFAs. Secondly, the ESV in NKEFAs is greater than that of Non-NKEFAs, and there is a significant concentration of low–low (L–L) agglomeration areas and high–high (H–H) gather areas of ESV. The former primarily lies within Chongqing’s one-hour economic circle, while the latter is mainly distributed in Eastern Chongqing. Thirdly, the policy effect of NKEFA for ecosystem protection is 1.8445 higher than that of the control group. The mechanism analysis indicates that NKEFA plays a crucial role in restricting population density that improves ESV to a certain extent. It is evident that NKEFA functions through institutional constraints.