An Empirical Analysis of the Coupling Coordination among Decomposed Effects of Urban Infrastructure Environment Benefit: Case Study of Four Chinese Autonomous Municipalities

The environment benefit of urban public infrastructure is the positive influence on the natural ecological environment generated by the use of urban infrastructure. This paper decomposes urban infrastructure environment benefit into three effects which include treating waste effect, purifying air effect, and regulating climate effect for the first time and introduces a comprehensive approach to evaluate the coupling coordination among three effects taking four Chinese autonomous municipalities as an example. These four cities have large-scale urban infrastructures but their environment problems are more serious. The basic function of urban infrastructures, especially environment protection, has not been fully played in these cities. Whether the different decomposed effects of urban infrastructure environment benefit have been developed in harmony or not is unclear. We analyzed the coordinated development among three effects by constructing a coupling coordination degree model and studied the impacts of three effects on coupling coordination degree using the panel data regression model. The result showed that the coupling coordination degrees among three effects of urban infrastructure environment benefit of four cities were all at the level of moderately unbalanced development and the impacts of three effects on coupling coordination degree among them in four cities were fairly close.