Coupling Coordination Relationship between Urban Economical Resilience and Economic Development: Evidence from China

Abstract

The coupled and coordinated development of urban economic resilience and economic development is a key measure to balance development and security. This study uses data from 281 prefecture-level and above cities in China spanning 2010–2018, constructs an evaluation system for urban economic resilience and economic development levels via the entropy weight method, establishes a coupling coordination model to study the spatiotemporal characteristics of their coupling coordination, and applies the Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) to analyze the spatial heterogeneity of impact effects and driving factors. The findings show that spatially, central cities maintain good coupling coordination, effectively balancing economic development and risk prevention capabilities; the strong coupling coordination of these cities exhibits obvious spillover effects, forming urban agglomerations centered on central cities with strong economic strength, and the overall coupling coordination degree presents the characteristic of being stronger in the southeast and weaker in the northwest. Temporally, the urban coupling coordination degree has decreased significantly since 2016. Meanwhile, the coupling coordination degree between urban economic resilience and economic development shows the characteristics of spatial autocorrelation and spatiotemporal differentiation. Factors such as technological innovation, economic openness, population growth, industrial upgrading, and residents' savings have different impacts on the coupling coordination degree respectively. Finally, this paper puts forward policy suggestions based on the empirical results.