Coupling coordination degree for urban green growth between public demand and government supply in urban agglomeration: A case study from China

The public demand for urban green growth (UGG) varies greatly due to climate conditions, resource endowments, geographical location; thus, understanding the coupling relationship between public demand and government supply is important to optimize government investment. This paper aims to evaluate the coupling coordination of UGG between public demand and government supply. An index system consisting of six aspects, including environment, society, economy, population, production and life, was used to evaluate the government supply. Meanwhile, citizens' demand was measured by the satisfaction for the six aspects. The coupling coordination degree model (CCDM) was established to analyze the government supply and public demand for UGG, and it was tested in the case of Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration in China. The results indicated that citizens of Shandong Peninsula are basically satisfied, and the satisfaction for the environment, population and life is higher than the average value. From 2015 to 2019, the government supply level shows a trend of rising first and then declining, of which environment has been always at a high level for the five years. The coupling coordination degree of UGG shows the supply and demand in different cities of urban agglomerations is unbalanced, and the overall value of the eastern coast is higher than that of the western inland area. Moreover, the concept of relative satisfaction was put forwards, which is of great significance for regional policy. To improve UGG for a city, determining optimization objectives base on their evaluation results of coupling coordination degree and relative satisfaction is important, as well as the possible external reasons for the low coupling coordination degree.