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Accurately grasping the structural characteristics and influencing factors of green development spatial association are significant for green coordinated development and ecological civilization construction in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). This study evaluates the GBA’s green development performance from 2015 to 2019 based on duality theory, and uses social network analysis to explore the structural characteristics and evolution of the green development spatial association network, and then uses the exponential random graph model to reveal the influencing factors of network formation. we find that: (1) the GBA’s green development is steady. Its spatial association network became increasingly complex, and tends to be tight. (2) As important hubs, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong have the dominant positions in the GBA’s green development spatial association network. Huizhou, Jiangmen, Zhaoqing, and Macao are at the edge of the network, and their interoperability with other cities is relatively weak. (3) Four subgroups exist in the GBA during different periods, with obvious gradient characteristics between them, and the multilevel transmission mechanism of the green development network gradually forms. (4) Economic development and urbanization level, ecological environment endowment, and geographical, institutional, and industrial proximity all have significant impacts on the formation of the GBA’s green development spatial association network. First published online 23 March 2022

With climate change and urbanization, the rainstorm disaster has become one of the major climate risks in constructing the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). Based on daily precipitation, socio-economic data and a comprehensive evaluation method, the characteristics and risks of rainstorm disaster in the GBA at county level are investigated in this paper. Considering the hazard, vulnerability and exposure, the risks of rainstorm disasters are high (Level 3) and very high (Level 4) in Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Dongguan, Jiangmen and Shenzhen. From 1990 to 2018, the frequency and intensity of rainstorms in the GBA have increased by 10 times and 2 mm per decade, respectively. Moreover, the population, gross domestic product, and built-up areas have increased significantly in the GBA, while the vegetation coverage has decreased. The combination of these changes results in an increase in the frequency of rainstorm disasters by two times from 2005 to 2018 compared with that from 1990 to 2004. The findings of this study can provide a positive reference for local governments to improve the pertinence of the strategies for rainstorm disaster prevention and mitigation.

Network patterns of tourist flows can reveal differences in tourism resources among destinations from the perspective of network science, providing valuable suggestions for tourism managers and policymakers to promote the balanced and sustainable development of tourism. This paper focuses on urban agglomerations, a highly developed spatial form of integrated cities, and proposes a research framework to extract the network patterns of tourist flows through digital footprints. Based on an illustrative case study using geo-located travel blog data from Qunar.com, we built a tourist flow network for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), China. The analysis shows: (1) GBA’s tourist flow network is obviously heterogeneous, showing a pattern of “four cores and three poles”; (2) the strong “administrative barrier effect,” revealed by community detection within the network, is the main obstacle to integrating regional tourism; (3) strengthening the infrastructure of tourism mediation cities such as Guangzhou, Zhuhai, and Shenzhen, so as to avoid the “structural hole” caused by the tourist flows between cities, is an urgent issue that the GBA government needs to address. To summarize, the research framework can provide a theoretical basis and concrete suggestions for the planning and management of the tourism industry in urban agglomerations.

The construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area requires the establishment of a comprehensive port cooperation mechanism. Coordination is key to port integration. This paper establishes a multi-group Lotka-Volterra model based on the theory of competition and cooperation to study the evolution of the relationships among Hong Kong Port, Shenzhen Port, and Guangzhou Port. The results show that the three major ports have predator-prey roles and form a symbiotic competition and cooperation ecological pattern. The extended Hotelling model is established to study the central ports’ spatial differences; the results show that whether it is the central port cooperation body or the entire central port group, the gains from Shenzhen Port–Guangzhou Port cooperation are greater than between either and Hong Kong Port for Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area’s container business. The biggest competitor to Hong Kong Port in the container business is Guangzhou Port. Hong Kong Port will gain more from cooperation with Shenzhen Port and should strengthen such cooperation. The study provides quantitative support and reference for positioning the strategic development of the high-end shipping business in Hong Kong Port, the pilot free-trade port in Shenzhen Port, and the exploration of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong composite port, Guangzhou Port’s comprehensive shipping hub.

The construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area requires the establishment of a comprehensive port cooperation mechanism. Coordination is key to port integration. This paper establishes a multi-group Lotka-Volterra model based on the theory of competition and cooperation to study the evolution of the relationships among Hong Kong Port, Shenzhen Port, and Guangzhou Port. The results show that the three major ports have predator-prey roles and form a symbiotic competition and cooperation ecological pattern. The extended Hotelling model is established to study the central ports’ spatial differences; the results show that whether it is the central port cooperation body or the entire central port group, the gains from Shenzhen Port–Guangzhou Port cooperation are greater than between either and Hong Kong Port for Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area’s container business. The biggest competitor to Hong Kong Port in the container business is Guangzhou Port. Hong Kong Port will gain more from cooperation with Shenzhen Port and should strengthen such cooperation. The study provides quantitative support and reference for positioning the strategic development of the high-end shipping business in Hong Kong Port, the pilot free-trade port in Shenzhen Port, and the exploration of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong composite port, Guangzhou Port’s comprehensive shipping hub.

Recently, scholars have begun to shift their focus toward the idea of the marketization of startups and the relationship with entrepreneurial psychology or other factors; however, the establishment of a unified and clear standard of entrepreneurship educational methods remains unfulfilled. Our study investigates 46 representative startups in four industries, including financial technology, biotechnology, education, and cultural tourism areas in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and Southeast Asia (SEA) to observe factors from different backgrounds but matter in common for building entrepreneurship education systems and methods in different countries. We used the fuzzy qualitative comparison method (fsQCA) to survey startup entrepreneurs and executives through questionnaires, selecting startup key factors including entrepreneurial psychology (optimism, passion, self-efficacy), product advantage, market and cultural environment, entrepreneurial policy, and geographical advantage. The survey was conducted on six key variables, namely, geographical advantage, to observe the conditional grouping and paths of factors influencing the establishment of Startups from an overall perspective. This study explores the path combination that plays a key role in the establishment of new enterprises, and further uses specific industry cases to verify the rationality and credibility of the path combination. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) There are five combination paths affecting the establishment of new enterprises, which are “psychology and market,” “psychology, product, and region,” “psychology, culture and policy,” “psychology, market, and culture,” and “market, policy, and region” combination paths; (2) Entrepreneur psychology, market environment, and entrepreneurship policy are the core conditions to improve the effectiveness of the establishment of new enterprises, while the other three variables are non-core variables in different paths; (3) There are different paths of entrepreneurial paths and factor combinations in different regions or industries.

We investigated the digital technology innovation association’s spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors using social network analysis and a negative binomial gravity regression model. The model was based on the transfer of digital technology patent rights among cities in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area from 2010 to 2020. The following are the paper’s main findings: First, the digital technology innovation association among cities in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area is strengthening, and the accessibility and agglomeration of each city node are improving, as are small-world characteristics. Second, for a long time, the four cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Foshan have been at the epicenter of digital technology innovation. Third, in a more peripheral position, Zhongshan, Huizhou, and Zhaoqing have gradually increased the number of digital technology innovation linkages with other cities. Fourth, technological and institutional proximity positively impact digital technology innovation associations in the Greater Bay Area, whereas geographical distance has a negative impact. The study’s findings can be used to help promote digital technology innovation linkages and develop policies for innovation development in the Greater Bay Area.

Balancing urban development and ecosystem conservation in the context of natural resource scarcity can provide scientific guidance for land use planning. We integrated research methods, such as ecosystem services (ES) assessment, coastal vulnerability assessment, multi-objective linear planning, and land use change simulation, to develop a new model framework for multi-scenario urban land expansion simulation based on ecosystem services. In relation to the land use scale and constraints, we simulated three types of scenarios in 2035, including a status quo continuity scenario (SCS), economic development scenario (EDS), and ecological protection scenario (EPS), to explore the ideal land use optimization strategies to enhance ES and land use efficiency. The results indicated that the scale of construction land under the three scenarios grew, and arable land and grassland had the largest losses. The continued urban expansion in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area has already had a significant negative impact on ecosystem services and could result in a total ESV loss of USD 28.1 billion by 2035 if an economic-first development model is adopted. Based on the hotspots of urban construction land expansion in the ecological–economic priority game, we proposed a classification and optimization strategy for land use, including proactive restoration of damaged ecological spaces with high ESVs (Zhaoqing City and Huizhou City), optimization of green space quality and formation of ecological corridors (Guangzhou City, Shenzhen City, Hong Kong, and Macao), and implementation of natural resource conservation planning and spatial regulation in the urban–rural integration area (Foshan City and Dongguan City). This research framework scientifically allocates the “quality” of ecosystem values and “quantity” of natural resources and provides a reference for regional “bottom-up” territorial spatial planning.

Pb and Cd accumulation in riparian soils and river sediments in river basins is a challenging pollution issue due to the persistence and bioaccumulation of these two trace metals. Understanding the migration characteristics and input sources of these metals is the key to preventing metal pollution. This study was conducted to explore the contents, geochemical fractionation, and input sources of Pb and Cd in riparian soils and river sediments from three lower reaches of the Pearl River Delta located in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area. The total concentration of all Pb and Cd values exceeded the background values to varying degrees, and the exchangeable fraction of Cd in riparian soils and river sediments accounted for the largest proportion, while that of Pb was dominated by the residual fraction. Geoaccumulation index calculations showed that in the riparian soils, the average accumulation degree of Pb (0.52) in the Beijiang River (BJR) was the highest, while that of Cd (2.04) in the Xijiang River (XJR) was the highest. Unlike that in riparian soils, the maximum accumulation of Pb (0.76) and Cd (3.01) in river sediments both occurred in the BJR. Furthermore, the enrichment factor results also showed that Pb and Cd in the riparian soils and river sediments along the BJR were higher than those in the XJR and Dongjiang River (DJR). The relationship between enrichment factors and nonresidual fractions further proved that the enrichment factors of Cd were significantly correlated with the nonresidual fractions of Cd, which may imply various anthropogenic sources of Cd in the three reaches. Moreover, source identification based on principal component analysis (PCA) and Pb isotope ratio analysis indicated that riparian soils and river sediments have inconsistent pollution source structures. The PCA results showed that Pb and Cd were homologous inputs in the DJR, and there were significant differences only in the riparian soils and river sediments. Pb isotope tracing results further showed that the bedrock of high geological background from upstream may be the main reason for Cd accumulation in the XJR. However, the ultrahigh accumulation of Cd in the BJR is mainly caused by the input of the upstream mining and metallurgy industry. The control of upstream input sources will be the key to the prevention of trace metal pollution in these regions.

Ecosystem services (ES) are the contribution of ecosystem structure and function to human well-being, connecting natural and socio-economic systems. ES trade-off/synergy has been one of the critical issues in sustainable environmental governance for guiding and formulating environmental policies. However, science-to-practice framework for ecosystem services trade-off/synergy governance are still rare. This study presents a comprehensive framework for identifying and managing trade-off and synergy of ESs in an urbanizing region. Using Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA)—one of the fastest urbanizing regions in China—as a case, this study identified major ecosystem service bundles (ESBs) and applied the comprehensive framework to inform ES trade-off/synergy governance. The results showed that there were three stable ESBs in the GBA, and that ESB 1 (high grain production) and ESB 2 (high carbon sequestration) should be increased, and ESB 3 (all ES provision are low) should be increased. Moreover, there was large spatial–temporal change in ESBs in the central area of the GBA during 2000–2015 due to population and land urbanization. This study provides valuable information for sustainable land management and environmental governance in an urbanizing region.

Carbon emissions reduction is an urgent global call to action, and for China, the nation with the largest carbon dioxide emissions, the task is especially arduous. For a country like China with many provinces and cities and unbalanced regional economic development, how to balance carbon emission reduction targets with economic development goals has become a social concern. Estimating the emission reduction costs of economic entities at all levels and reasonably allocating emission reduction tasks are the basic prerequisites for sustainable urban development. Based on an input–output (IO) table analysis of the socioeconomic data of Guangdong Province from 2017, this paper uses RAS and other data reconciliation methods to decompose various statistical data based on cities and industries. A multiregional IO table of nine cities in Guangdong Province in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is obtained, and a multiregional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of Guangdong Province is established. Using this model, this paper explores city-level differences in carbon emissions reduction costs while accounting for differences in economic development under industry-wide coverage. A scientific basis for the allocation of urban carbon quotas is provided, which is particularly important for the sustainable development of cities. First, the carbon emissions reduction cost (carbon price) of each city is related to the intensity of emissions reduction and the present carbon intensity, both of which are affected by cities’ industrial and trade structures. Second, under neoclassical closure conditions, carbon emissions reduction is found to have less impact on the overall gross domestic product (GDP). At the industrial level, the high-carbon sectors are the most affected, whereas the low-carbon sectors are less affected. Notably, some industries become beneficiary sectors. Under Keynesian closure conditions, carbon emissions reduction has a greater impact on overall GDP, and all cities and industries are generally affected, especially those that are currently carbon- and trade-intensive. Third, to ensure the achievement of emissions reduction targets and minimize negative economic impacts, it is determined that the direct and opportunity costs of carbon emissions reduction must be fully considered when allocating carbon allowances, and optimal solutions should be derived from the combined perspective of fairness and efficiency.

Based on the equivalent factor table of terrestrial ESV in China in 2010, this paper proposes a regionalized and interannual ESV correction method. Taking southern Guangzhou as the study area, which is located in the geometric center of the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GHM GBA), this study evaluated the ecosystem service equivalent value (ESEV) and ecosystem service value (ESV) and their changes in 2004, 2010 and 2016 and carried out grid processing, trend analysis and global/local spatial autocorrelation of the ecosystem service density (ESD) in the study area by using the Natural Resources Integrated Database of Guangdong Province (NRIDB). The results of data processing and spatial analysis computed in this study were published as Web services through the NRIDB and displayed in the visualization front-end. The results showed that (1) during 2004–2016, the urbanization process in the study area led to the expansion of built-up land, which occupied a large amount of ecological land and resulted in a decreasing trend of ESV. (2) Benefiting from socioeconomic development, the standard value volume of the ESEV (D value) kept increasing, which resulted in an increasing trend for the total ESV. (3) The spatial autocorrelation analysis results of ESD indicated that the spatial distribution of ESD in the study area had strong spatial agglomeration and positive spatial correlation. With the progress of urbanization and increases in research scale and interval distance, the spatial difference in ESD became larger over time. The research results provide a reference for the coordinated allocation of natural resources and environmental protection in the GHM GBA.

As two main drivers of vegetation dynamics, climate variability and human activities greatly influence net primary productivity (NPP) variability by altering the hydrothermal conditions and biogeochemical cycles. Therefore, studying NPP variability and its drivers is crucial to understanding the patterns and mechanisms that sustain regional ecosystem structures and functions under ongoing climate variability and human activities. In this study, three indexes, namely the potential NPP (NPPp), actual NPP (NPPa), and human-induced NPP (NPPh), and their variability from 2000 to 2020 in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) were estimated and analyzed. Six main scenarios were generated based on change trends in the three indexes over the past 21 years, and the different relative impacts of climate variability and human activities on NPPa variability were quantitatively analyzed and identified. The results showed that the NPPp, NPPa, and NPPh had heterogeneous spatial distributions, and the average NPPp and NPPa values over the whole study area increased at rates of 3.63 and 6.94 gC·m−2·yr−1 from 2000 to 2020, respectively, while the NPPh decreased at a rate of −4.43 gC·m−2·yr−1. Climate variability and the combined effects of climate variability and human activities were the major driving factors of the NPPa increases, accounting for more than 72% of the total pixels, while the combined effects of the two factors caused the NPPa values to increase by 32–54% of the area in all cities expect Macao and across all vegetation ecosystems. Human activities often led to decreases in NPPa over more than 16% of the total pixels, and were mainly concentrated in the central cities of the GBA. The results can provide a reference for understanding NPP changes and can offer a theoretical basis for implementing ecosystem restoration, ecological construction, and conservation practices in the GBA.

Inverse globalization and the spread of epidemics have affected the world economy. Promoting the convergence and resilience of the tourism industry is an important means of boosting regional economic recovery and high-quality development. Taking the nine cities in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) as cases, this study measures the state of development in each city from 2010 to 2019, and it constructs a coupled coordinated model to evaluate the integration of culture and tourism development. The entropy method and the coupling-coordination-degree model are evaluated through this empirical analysis. The results demonstrate that most cities in the GBA show an upward trend in the development and integration of the tourism industry. The development and integration of the tourism industry in Guangzhou and Shenzhen has always been in a leading position. The main factors that affect the level of tourism-industry convergence in the GBA cities include the level of economic development, the scale of government spending, the level of urbanization, and the level of technological innovation.

The Pearl River Estuary is in the geometric center of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, which is one of the main battlefields to drive the high-quality development of China’s economy. This paper uses seven sets of typical satellite images in Pearl River Estuary for nearly half a century (from 1973 to 2021) to analyze the changes of coastline and sea reclamation. The results show that from 1973 to 2021, the total length of the coastline of the Pearl River Estuary increased from 240.09 km to 416.00 km, and that of the continental coastline from 186.87 km to 246.21 km (but the length of natural coastline in the continental coastline decreased from 136.91 km to 15.17 km). In the same period, the total reclamation area of the Pearl River Estuary increased by 28,256.06 ha. Before 2012, the growth rate of reclamation was generally fast. After 2012, the reclamation in China has entered a period of reflection. With reclamation was strictly controlled in the new era, only the previously approved reclamation projects and national major projects have been guaranteed, which makes the average annual growth rate of the coastline length and the reclamation area in the region show a significant downward trend. The reclamation in early days was largely for agriculture and pond culture purposes, but is shifting to transportation, industrial development, and urban construction in recent decades. This study scientifically analyzes the coastline and reclamation changes of the Pearl River Estuary in the past half century, which has a very important reference value for the next step to formulate marine ecological protection and restoration strategies, and construct a new pattern of marine space development and protection.

Mulberry-dyke-fish pond ecosystems are a representative traditional eco-agriculture in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). Investigations about the changes in the systems and their relevant water environments under the background of rapid urbanization can provide valuable information to formulate sustainable protection and development strategies. Using the Landsat images obtained after 1986, this study combined supervised classification and visual interpretation approaches, as well as water intensity index and synthesized index to identify the spatial patterns of changes in the ponds in the GBA over the past 40 years. The results indicated that during the period 1986–2013, the total surface area of the ponds in the GBA increased significantly and peaked in 2013 with a total increase of 84.63%, After that, the total surface area showed a downward trend with a total decrease of approximately 31.34%. The year of 2013 was identified as the milestone of the changes. The results proved that human activities have continuously influenced the spatial distribution and size of fish ponds in the past 40 years. The fish ponds had transformed from near-natural ponds with different sizes and a near-natural random distribution in the early stage into an artificial distribution and an artificial shape. Land use changes, industrial transfer, Government guidance and financial motives were the major drivers to the changes. If no effective measures are taken, this shrinking trend in the ponds will remain in the future.

Promoting the coordinated development of urbanization and eco-environment is essential for the development of urban agglomerations. As an emerging economic growth pole in China, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) has become a research hotspot in recent years. However, relevant studies in this area have been largely constrained by the incomparability of statistical data between the inland part of the GBA and the two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macao) of the GBA. This study used nighttime light data and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to evaluate the level of urbanization and eco-environment in the GBA, respectively. Then we adopted the gravity center model to analyze the overall coupling situation between urbanization and eco-environment change. We also adopted a coordination index to determine the spatial differentiation characteristics of this coupling in the GBA from 2000 to 2018. The results show that (1) the spatial pattern of urbanization and eco-environment both show an approximately circular structure, and the change rates of these two variables show significant spatiotemporal differentiation, (2) on the whole, urban development and eco-environment construction became more coupled in the GBA during 2000&ndash, 2018, as indicated by the continuously decreasing distance between the gravity centers of urbanization and eco-environment, and (3) as for the spatial differentiation characteristic of this coupling, the GBA was generally dominated by slightly uncoupled units, while the spatial distribution of different coupling types transformed from a circular structure to a relatively random form.

A new era in the development of multi-airport regions (MARs) has been in China, especially in the construction of global urban areas such as the Guangdong&ndash, Hong Kong&ndash, Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). In order to better understand competition and provide significant advice to support sustainable development of Chinese MARs, this paper takes the GBA-MAR as an example, and then explores the competition between airports in this multi-airport region based on route level and its impact on passenger airport choice using three liner models. According to our findings, competition is concentrated on a few air routes in the Northeast&ndash, East Coastal region and the Asia-Pacific region, in which all three airports operate. Although the domestic market of the GBA-MAR has been relatively mature, the international air transport market is still left with considerable room, which is also reflected in connections to the world&rsquo, s cities and tourist destinations. In addition, the research also found that different airport brands created by route type significantly affected passenger airport choice. Overall, the study revealed that whether from a supply or demand aspect, competition between airports in a multi-airport region&mdash, not just airline competition in a single airport&mdash, is an important topic.