Under the new water control philosophy, reclaimed water utilization is an important strategic measure to increase water supply and reduce water environmental pollution. This has important implications for addressing the water crisis in urban development. The scientific and reasonable price of reclaimed water has a positive effect on promoting the utilization of reclaimed water and improving the utilization rate of urban reclaimed water. Therefore, this study extracted the influencing factors of reclaimed water price through grounded theory and used the ISM method to elucidate the logical hierarchy and investigate their influencing mechanisms. The results indicate that the structural system of factors affecting the price of reclaimed water was composed of 16 factors, which could be divided into four hierarchical levels. Among them, the external value of reclaimed water utilization, the technical level of reclaimed water processes, the regional economic development level, and the quality differences between reclaimed water and conventional water were the deep-rooted factors that affect the price of reclaimed water. In the end, the policy implications regarding the management of reclaimed water prices were proposed from the perspectives of surface-level direct factors, middle-level indirect factors, and deep-rooted factors.

Digitalization is reshaping environmental governance by enabling real-time data collection, information sharing, and coordinated regulatory action. However, how heterogeneous enterprise digitalization modes, compliance-oriented digitalization, and deep digitalization affect multi-actor digital collaborative governance for carbon mitigation and pollution reduction remain underexplored. This study develops a tripartite evolutionary game model involving the government, enterprises, and the public. The model distinguishes enterprises’ digitalization modes and examines how government digital regulation, enterprise carbon mitigation and pollution reduction strategies, and public participation co-evolve under different cost–benefit conditions. Through numerical simulations and theoretical analysis, the study identifies critical factors of stakeholders’ strategies and proposes possible evolution paths for digital collaborative governance. The results show that (1) the system can evolve toward an ideal stable equilibrium: government digital regulation, enterprise carbon mitigation and pollution reduction, and active public participation; there is a high probability that enterprises will adopt a deep level of digitalization. (2) Subsidies for deep digitalization can increase the probability of enterprise deep digitalization, but excessive subsidies may increase fiscal pressure and destabilize government digital regulation. Compared with subsidy intensity, the additional benefits of digital collaborative governance accruing to enterprises are more important in promoting the transition from compliance-oriented to deep digitalization. (3) Public participation and government digital regulation both contribute to the stability of digital collaborative governance. Higher public participation significantly accelerates system convergence, while government digital regulation remains sustainable when digital collaborative governance benefits can offset construction and operating costs. These findings clarify the conditional logic of digital collaborative governance and offer actionable policy implications.

Water conservation, as a critical ecosystem service, plays a vital role in maintaining regional water resources balance. Against the backdrop of rapid urbanization, the expansion of construction land has intensified the encroachment on ecological spaces, posing significant challenges to water resource carrying capacity. From a supply–demand perspective, this study employs the InVEST model and integrates multi-source data including meteorological and socio-economic datasets to construct models of water conservation supply and demand. Furthermore, spatial analysis methods are applied to examine the evolution of water resource carrying capacity in Gansu Province—a key region within the Yellow River Basin—from 2000 to 2020. The results indicate the following: (1) through desertification control, unused land has been progressively restored to grassland, yet continuous urban expansion has substantially encroached upon surrounding plowland and grassland; (2) the spatial pattern of water conservation supply exhibits a “high in the south and west, low in the north and east” distribution, with the maximum value per pixel increasing from 7.89 × 10⁵ m³ to 8.15 × 10⁵ m³. Overall, water resource carrying capacity has generally declined, with intensified pressure in central cities such as Lanzhou, while some improvement is observed in forested areas of the south; and (3) cold spots in the western Qilian Mountains have expanded toward the Hexi Corridor, reflecting significant spatial changes and indicating ecological degradation. Urbanization has markedly exacerbated regional imbalances in water resource carrying capacity, providing a scientific basis for water–ecological risk management in arid regions.