Does Technological Innovation Improve the Regional Ecological Eciency? Empirical Evidence From China

33 The rapid development of China's economy and urbanization has led to the rapid 34 deterioration of the ecological environment. This study aims to explore the relationship 35 between provincial eco-efficiency and technological innovation in China. The DEA 36 model is used to measure the ecological efficiency of 30 regions in China by using the 37 data from 2007 to 2017, and different spatial econometric models were used to explore 38 the influencing factors of ecological efficiency. The results show that in terms of 39 ecological efficiency, the western region has the highest ecological efficiency, and the 40 eastern region has the lowest. However, with the acceleration of urbanization, the 41 ecological efficiency of the three regions gradually declined, and the last three regions 42 basically remained at the same level. Based on spatial econometric analysis, the 43 relationship between technological innovation and ecological efficiency is discussed. 44 The results show that technological innovation has a negative impact on ecological 45 efficiency, which confirms the existence of the environmental Kuznets Curve. In 46 addition, environmental regulation and education level can improve ecological 47 efficiency, while urbanization rate can reduce ecological efficiency. At the same time, 48 spatial spillover effect plays an important role in technological innovation, 49 environmental regulation, education level and urbanization rate in the change of 50 regional ecological efficiency. Policy recommendations for further strengthening 51 environmental protection and sustainable development are discussed. 52

higher ecological efficiency than mining and other industries, The main reason for the 132 high eco-efficiency is that China's oil and gas exploration and production areas are 133 under state control . Scholars also found that the upgrading of

Technological innovation and ecological efficiency 137
The theory of technological innovation has a long history and has been widely applied 138 Among them,  represents the efficiency value of the ith DMU, it's 01  . When 183 1   , The decision unit is represented as an invalid DEA.

Space panel model 185
Most of the studies on spatial spillover and correlation effects use spatial econometric 186 models to measure. Generally, spatial econometric models mainly include Spatial 187 In the formula, it eff is explanatory variable, which means regional eco-efficiency in 194 China；W is space weight matrix, in this paper, we would use 0-1 matrix as the space 195 weight matrix. In this paper, the 0-1 adjacency matrix is chosen as the spatial weight matrix of the 203 spatial econometric model. the matrix is set as follows: 204 when region i is adjacent to j , ij W =1; when region i is not adjacent to j , ij W =0. In this paper, we choose DEA model to measure regional eco-efficiency of China. absence of data in Tibet, the measurement of Tibet will be excluded in this paper to 219 ensure the accuracy of data. And interpolation method is adopted to supplement 220 individual default values in other provinces. Detailed index selection is shown in Table  221 1: 222  (1)Explained variable：The ecological efficiency previously measured by the DEA model is used as the explained variable, which is marked as eff. 227 (2)explanatory variable： 228 technological innovation：Technological innovation is calculated based on multi-229 dimensional indicators. Based on the scientific, operability and data availability of the 230 indicators, this paper constructs a comprehensive index system of technological 231 innovation, which mainly includes three first-level indicators of innovation 232 environment, innovation input and innovation output and nine second-level indicators. 233 Specific indicators are shown in Table 2.   The results of regional ecological efficiency are shown in Table 3 and Figure 2. Lots of productive enterprises with high pollution were punished according to law, 313 resulting in a rapid increase in regional ecological efficiency. 314

Spatial econometric model 319
In combination with the availability and operability of the data, ecological efficiency 320 was taken as the explanatory variable, and technological innovation, environmental 321 regulation, industrial structure, and urbanization rate were taken as the core 322 explanatory variables. Descriptive statistical results are shown in the following table 323 4: 324  The results obtained through calculation are shown in Table 5： 338

341
As we can be seen from Table 5, among all influencing factors, environmental 342 regulation has the greatest positive impact on ecological efficiency, with a ratio of 0.108. 343 Technological innovation was the lowest, with a ratio of -0.191. This means that for 344 each increase of technological innovation, the ecological efficiency will decrease by 345 0.191. Technological innovation has no positive effect on regional ecological efficiency. 346 The possible reason is that with the increasing pressure of environmental protection in 347 recent years, the intensity of regional innovation research and development has been 348 restrained. From the perspective of space spillover, technological innovation has a 349 positive impact on the ecological environment. The possible reason is that with the 350 increase of inter-regional environmental protection pressure, highly polluting and 351 efficient enterprises may be moved to the surrounding areas, which will not only bear 352 the high pollution of enterprises, but also benefit from enterprises. The surrounding 353 areas can invest economic benefits into R&D innovation, which will lead to the positive 354 impact of surrounding technological innovation on ecological efficiency. 355 The positive correlation effect of environmental regulation on regional ecological 356 efficiency is the largest, and the specific value is 0.108, which passes the 1% test. The 357 results show that environmental regulation plays a good role in improving regional 358 ecological efficiency. At the same time, the spatial lag term of environmental regulation 359 is also significantly positive, indicating that environmental regulation not only has a 360 good impact on the ecological efficiency of the region, but also has a good impact on 361 the green development of other regions through spillover effect. The average number 362 of years of education also has a positive impact on regional ecological efficiency, with 363 a specific value of 0.0442, passing the 1% test. Its spatial lag term also passed the 1% 364 test, with a specific value of 0.132, indicating that the increase of people's years of 365 education will improve people's environmental awareness, and the improvement of 366 people's overall environmental awareness will also improve the surrounding ecological 367 efficiency through the spatial spillover effect. Both the coefficient of industrial structure 368 and the coefficient of opening to the outside world are negative, but not significant. The 369 urbanization rate is negatively correlated with the regional ecological efficiency, and 370 the spatial spillover term coefficient is also negative, both of which pass the 10% test, 371 and the small coefficients are -0.0424 and -0.108, respectively. This indicates that the 372 urbanization rate will have a negative impact on the regional ecological efficiency, 373 which is also consistent with the actual situation. In recent years, China has been 374 advancing its urbanization process, with the urbanization rate exceeding 50 percent in 375 2012. The rapid urbanization process will cause damage to the ecological environment, 376 thus reducing the ecological efficiency. 377 By analyzing the spatial effect of empty panels, the specific results are shown in Table  378 6: 379 According to the analysis results, the direct effect of technological innovation on 381 ecological efficiency is negative and has passed the 1% test, but the indirect effect is 382 not obvious. The possible reason is that China has gradually strengthened the awareness 383 of ecological environment protection in recent years. The punishment for the 384 enterprises with high pollution affecting the ecological environment is increased, which 385 restrains the research and development of technological innovation, leading to the 386 negative impact of technological innovation on the ecological efficiency of the region. 387 Environmental regulation has a significant positive impact on the ecological efficiency, 388 which not only has a good impact on the regional ecological efficiency but also has a 389 spillover effect on the surrounding areas. The average length of education of residents 390 has a good effect on the ecological efficiency, the direct effect is negative, but the more 391 obvious is a positive indirect effect. The possible reason is that with the increasingly 392 perfect regional transportation system in China, there are more exchanges between 393 different regions, and the increase of residents' years of education has produced a 394 greater spatial spillover effect. The direct and indirect effects of FDI and industrial 395 structure are not significant. The direct and indirect effects of urbanization rate have 396 passed the test of 5% and 10% respectively, and the coefficient is negative. It shows 397 that urbanization has a negative effect on regional ecological efficiency, which is 398 consistent with the actual situation. Although China's urbanization has promoted 399 economic development and the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure, it 400 has also brought a series of ecological and environmental problems, such as urban heat 401 island effect, haze effect, congestion effect and garbage effect. 402