Structural characteristics and drivers of the ecological collaborative governance net-work in the Yellow River Basin:based on ERGMs
The Ecological Conservation and High-Quality Development Strategy of the Yellow River Basin emphasizes the important development direction of'jointly promoting large-scale conservation and coordinated advancement of large-scale governance.'This study used text analysis methods to clarify the ecological collaborative governance relationships among the 42 prefecture-level cities/au-tonomous prefectures in the Yellow River Basin.It employed network analysis methods and exponential random graph models(ERGMs)to identify the structural characteristics and formation mechanisms of the collaborative governance network.The results suggested that:① The ecological collaborative governance network in the Yellow River Basin exhibited an overall pattern of'a few prefecture-level cit-ies governing independently,while most prefecture-level cities/autonomous prefectures collaborating closely within their regions.'Sig-nificant differences existed in collaborative structures among upstream,midstream,and downstream areas.The module division exhibit-ed characteristics of organizational and geographical proximity,as well as interprovincial spillover effects,with varying levels of internal cohesion within each group.② The formation of the ecological collaborative governance network in the Yellow River Basin was signifi-cantly influenced by the effects of transitivity and preferential attachment.Prefecture-level cities/autonomous prefectures with larger ur-ban green space areas exerted a stronger collaborative attraction to other governance entities.There was also a tendency for collabora-tion among prefecture-level cities/autonomous prefectures governments with similar economic-geographic concentration and technology investment scales.Attributes such as geographical proximity and organizational proximity played important roles as exogenous drivers in the formation of collaborative networks.Based on these conclusions,the study proposes that future efforts should focus on refining governance policies to eliminate inter-provincial collaboration obstacles among prefecture-level cities/autonomous prefectures,enhanc-ing the transitivity of collaborative governance networks and leveraging the leadership of core prefecture-level cities/autonomous prefec-tures.Additionally,there is a need to improve incentive and compensation mechanisms to narrow the development gap among prefec-ture-level cities/autonomous prefectures.The establishment of a cross-provincial,prefecture-level cities/autonomous prefectures collabo-ration platform is suggested to mitigate the constraints of administrative division on collaborative behaviors,aiming to promote optimiza-tion and improvement of the ecological collaborative governance network in the Yellow River Basin.
Yellow River Basinecological protectioncollaborative governancegovernance networkexponential random graph mod-els