In the face of increasingly growing health demands and the impact of various public health emergencies, it is of great significance to study the regional differences in the allocation efficiency of the rural public health resources and its improvement mechanism. In this paper, the game competition relationship is included in the evaluation model, and the game cross-efficiency model is used to measure the allocation efficiency of the rural public health resources in 31 provinces of China from 2008 to 2017. Then, the Theil index model and the Gini index model are applied in exploring the regional differences in the allocation efficiency of rural public health resources and its sources. Finally, the bootstrap truncated regression model is used to analyze the influencing factors of the allocation efficiency of the rural public health resources in China. The results show that, first, the total allocation efficiency level of the rural public health resources in China from 2008 to 2017 is relatively low, and it presents a U-shaped trend, first falling and then rising. Second, the changing trend of the allocation efficiency of the rural public health resources in the eastern, central, and western regions of China is similar to that in the nationwide region, and it shows a gradient trend that “the allocation efficiency in the eastern region is high, the allocation efficiency in the western region is low, and the allocation efficiency in the Central region is at the medium level”. However, the gap among the three regions is continually narrowing. Third, the calculation results of the Theil index and the Gini index show that intra-regional differences are the major source of the regional differences in the allocation efficiency of the rural public health resources in China, and the inter-regional differences demonstrate an expansion trend. Finally, the improvement of the education level and the social support level will generally improve the allocation efficiency of the rural public health resources in China and its three regions. The increased governmental financial support and urbanization level will reduce the allocation efficiency of the rural public health resources in China and its three regions. The economic development level, the living conditions and the population density are the important influencing factors of the allocation efficiency differences of the rural public health resources in the three regions. Therefore, on the basis of ensuring the increase of the total supply of the rural public health resources, more attention should be paid to the improvement of the allocation efficiency. Moreover, on the basis of continually narrowing the inter-regional differences among the eastern, central, and western regions, more attention should be paid to the intra-regional differences of the allocation efficiency of the rural public health resources among the different provinces. The various economic and social policies should be constantly optimized to jointly improve the allocation efficiency of the rural public health resources.

The urban ecological civilization construction relates to welfare of the people and the national future. It is an important field of the high-quality economic development to improve the urban ecological efficiency level. The purpose of this research is to provide a new perspective and method for the quantitative study of the urban sustainable development, and also to provide some decision-making references for the improvement of the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province. This paper uses the slacks-based measure-data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) model containing the undesirable output and the Malmquist index model to fully evaluate the urban ecological efficiency level in Henan province during the period of 2005–2016, via both the static and dynamic analysis. Based on this, the bootstrap regression model is applied in analyzing the influencing factors of the urban ecological efficiency. The research shows three findings. First, according to the static efficiency analysis, the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province is low as a whole and has a big promotion space. Moreover, there is a significant difference in the urban ecological efficiency level among the five regions because of the different geographical locations and social and economic development situations of the cities. Second, according to the dynamic efficiency analysis, in the last 12 years, the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province has shown an overall growth trend, and the technological progress has played a major role in promoting the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province. Third, according to the influencing factor analysis, the governmental financial support hinders the improvement of the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province, while the level of opening to the outside world, the urban population density, and the urban greening level promote it.

Improving environmentally adjusted water use efficiency in the planting industry (EAWUE) is important for balancing agricultural production, water conservation, and water environmental protection. Using panel data for 101 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt during 2011–2023, this study integrates a Super-SBM model with undesirable outputs, a modified gravity model, social network analysis, and a temporal exponential random graph model (TERGM) to examine EAWUE dynamics, spatial association networks, and formation mechanisms. The results show that EAWUE improved overall, although spatial disparities remained evident. The spatial association network became denser and more connected, with inter-city linkages expanding from local associations to broader cross-regional and multi-node interactions. The Yangtze River Delta maintained a prominent core position, cities in the middle reaches played stronger bridging roles, and cities in the upper reaches showed increasing participation, forming four functional block types. Network tie formation was statistically associated with endogenous network structures, node attributes, spatial constraints, and temporal dependence. Reciprocity, transitive structures, and network persistence showed positive associations with tie formation, whereas geographic distance showed a negative association. Resource endowment, rural human capital, and industrial structure upgrading generally showed positive associations, while economic development and government support exhibited heterogeneous associations with sending and receiving roles. Sensitivity and robustness tests generally supported the main structural findings. These findings highlight the need for differentiated prefecture-level governance, stronger agricultural water conservation and non-point source pollution control, improved cross-regional coordination, and fuller use of core nodes and functional blocks to support sustainable agricultural water management.