Taking the Yellow River Basin as the study area, this research introduces peer effects into the spatial analysis of industrial ecologilization and constructs a spatial econometric model to examine the peer effects and underlying mechanisms of urban industrial ecologilization. The findings are as follows. (1) The level of industrial ecologilization in the study area initially increased and then declined, with widening regional disparities. Spatially, a multi-centric pattern emerged, centered around Qingdao and Jinan, with other provincial capitals as key nodes, while low-value zones persisted in areas such as the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region. (2) Industrial ecologilization exhibits significant positive peer effects, with the most pronounced effects observed among geographically adjacent cities. (3) Cities with lower transition levels are more inclined to imitate and learn from those with higher transition levels, and cities within the same river segment demonstrate active mutual influence in industrial ecologilization. (4) Mechanism analysis indicates that: The learning mechanism generally strengthens peer effects, though internal learning suppresses these effects in high- and medium-transition cities. The competition mechanism overall inhibits peer effects, particularly among high-transition cities. Internal learning suppresses peer effects in upstream and midstream segments but significantly promotes them in downstream processes. External demonstration effects play a positive role across all river segments. The competition mechanism only exhibits significant inhibitory effects in downstream processes, with no notable impact observed in upstream or midstream activities. Finally, targeted policy recommendations are proposed.
ZHANG et al. (Thu,) studied this question.