Coordinated development of urbanization and ecosystem services: A functional positioning and sufficiency-necessity matrix-driven framework

Coordinating urbanization and ecosystem services is a central issue for achieving sustainable development. However, existing studies have largely overlooked the functional orientation of regional development and have predominantly focused on the sufficiency dimension of influencing factors, while neglecting the necessity perspective. To address this gap, we integrate the Geodetector and necessary condition analysis (NCA) to construct a sufficiency–necessity framework. This framework explores the influencing factors of the coordinated coupling between urbanization and ecosystem services from two logical perspectives, adopting the major function-oriented zoning of Jiangxi Province, China as the study context. The results show that: (1) From 2000 to 2020, the comprehensive urbanization level (CUL) in Jiangxi Province was predominantly low, with high-intensity areas consistently concentrated in urbanized zones (46.15%); meanwhile, the comprehensive ecosystem service (CES) showed an overall declining trend, with the most pronounced decreases observed in ecological functional zones. (2) The dominant coupling coordination types between CUL and CES were marginal and primary coordination, with dysfunctional counties most prevalent in ecological functional zones and least in major agricultural production zones. (3) The spatial differentiation of the coupling coordination degree between CUL and CES was mainly driven by land-use structure, while climatic factors acted as stable necessary conditions in most regions. Factor classification further revealed that precipitation consistently served as sufficient and necessary category in both urbanized and agricultural production zones. In ecological functional zones, cropland (d > 0.19), built-up area (d > 0.18), and population density (d > 0.16) jointly formed sufficient and necessary category. Accordingly, this study contends that policy-making should be guided by the dual principles of zone-specific governance and factor-based management to provide a basis for formulating targeted government policies.