In view of the coordination of economy, society, and environment in the process of the rapid development of the regional economy, this study proposes the evaluation method of sustainable development of a regional economy on the basis of emergy. The study also constructed an evaluation index system of sustainable development of regional ecological economy from four aspects, namely, structural, functional, and ecological efficiency, and sustainable development index. The objective was to comprehensively evaluate the quality and environmental friendliness of regional economic development. On this basis, this study measured and evaluated the sustainable development of the ecological economy in Anhui Province by using emergy to analyze the statistical data of the economic development of Anhui Province, China, from 2010 to 2018. The study also provides targeted decision-making suggestions for the sustainable and high-quality development of the Anhui economy. Furthermore, this study provides a measure and evaluation method for the sustainable development of the regional economy and effective policy recommendations, which have important theoretical and practical significance.

The Chinese economy has undergone high-speed, high-quality growth, and the concept of low-carbon technology has gained popular support. Businesses and consumers must jointly endeavor to achieve low-carbon economic development. Moreover, it is important to investigate whether enterprises' low-carbon behavior is correlated with consumers' green consumption behavior. We built a theoretical model to depict the relationship between corporate public welfare low-carbon behavior, consumers' green purchase intention, and green purchase behavior. We then divided corporate public welfare low-carbon behavior into three dimensions. We proposed hypotheses, collected data through a questionnaire survey, and analyzed the data using statistical analysis software of SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 24.0. Public welfare low-carbon behavior was significantly correlated with consumers’ green purchase intention, and public welfare low-carbon participation and public welfare low-carbon motivation were significantly correlated with green purchase intention. Finally, we proposed suggestions from three perspectives: the public welfare low-carbon mechanism, public welfare low-carbon participation, and public welfare low-carbon motivation. The results provide theoretical support for research methods related to the low-carbon growth of enterprises and green consumption, as well as guidance and decision-making support for enterprises in carrying out cause marketing.

Regional synergy innovation capability is an important driving force in promoting the sustainable and high-quality development of the regional economy. Taking the regional innovation development panel data of the Yangtze River Delta integration region from 2010 to 2019 as a sample, this study constructs an evaluation index system of regional synergy innovation capability, weights the index using the entropy weight method, and measures the capability of the Yangtze River Delta integration region (three provinces and one city) using the composite system synergy degree model. The empirical results show that the synergy of regional synergy innovation in the Yangtze River Delta integration has increased steadily, but there is still much room for improvement. Anhui has great potential for synergy innovation with Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. Therefore, this study proposes countermeasures and suggestions for the high-quality development of Anhui’s synergy innovation capability under the integration of the Yangtze River Delta. This study provides theoretical and methodological support for enhancing regional synergy innovation capability and provides decision support for the sustainable and high-quality development of the regional economy.

Evaluating the degree of coordination among regional carbon emission systems is key to achieving an earlier carbon peak and carbon neutrality. However, quantifying the co-evolution of carbon emissions among regions is challenging. Therefore, we propose a data-driven method for evaluating the synergetic development of the regional carbon emission composite system. First, the proposed method employs relevant data to calculate the carbon emissions and carbon emission intensity of each subsystem within the region to describe the temporal trends. The inverse entropy weight method is then used to assign weight to each order parameter of the subsystem for data processing. Then, we perform synergetic development assessment of the composite system to measure the order degree of each subsystem, the degree of synergy among subsystems, and the overall synergetic degree of the temporal evolution of carbon emissions between regions. Finally, the evaluation results can be used to suggest measures for the regional coordinated reduction of carbon emissions. In this study, we used data from the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region from 2010 to 2019 to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the method. The results show that there is still a long way to go to reduce carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta region. Economic development still relies heavily on fossil energy consumption, and the regional carbon emission reduction synergy is not high. This study provides theoretical and methodological support for regional carbon emission reduction. Moreover, the proposed method can be applied to other regions to explore low-carbon and sustainable development options.

To delve into the interrelationship between the green transformation of industry and the economy’s high-quality development, to promote the coordinated development of industrial carbon emission efficiency and digital economy, to expand the scope and research ideas related to economic and social sustainable development, and to provide scientific reference for the low-carbon sustainable development of regional economy, this article introduced a data-centric methodology for evaluating the collaborative advancement of both industrial enterprises’ carbon emission efficiency and the digital economy. To accurately gauge the carbon footprint of industrial enterprises, models focusing on carbon emissions as well as carbon emission intensity were employed. To enhance the precision of evaluation outcomes and mitigate biases stemming from subjective weighting factors, we employed the entropy weight method to objectively assign weights to each indicator. Furthermore, the super-efficient slack-based model (SBM) can solve the problem that the conclusions are biased, due to the different radial. Subsequently, a carbon-emission efficiency slack-based measure model, and models for coupling degree and coupling-coordination degree were formulated. Anhui, as a central province in China, is also an important province in the Yangtze River Delta integration development. Coordinated development of its carbon emission efficiency and digital economy has important implications for the sustainable economy advancements of other regions in China, and even other countries or regions in the world. Therefore, Anhui was selected to be the empirical research sample. The results showed that the comprehensive levels of these two systems followed an increasing trend, while the digital economy lagged. Their coupling degree fluctuated and reached its highest point in 2021, whereas their coupling-coordination degree increased, showing high coupling and low coordination overall. This study proposes specific countermeasures and suggestions for the relevant decision-makers.