economics Paradigm Challenge

Pouring money into high-tech innovation is currently the biggest reason coastal areas are becoming so environmentally fragile.

March 25, 2026

Original Paper

Drivers of Ecological Environment Resilience in China's Coastal Areas

Chenggang Li, Guojie Ning, Jihong Chen, Mu Yue, Xianyu Yang, Fang Yang, Feng Yu

SSRN · 6465041

The Takeaway

While global policy promotes 'innovation' as the key to a greener future, this analysis found that innovation investment and industrial upgrades are actually making ecological environments less resilient to shocks, while basic economic development is the only factor improving resilience.

From the abstract

Scientifically measuring the ecological environment resilience and identifying its drivers is essential for advancing ecological protection and governance. This paper employs the Resistance-Adaptability-Restoration-Transformation (RART) framework to construct an index system of ecological environment resilience. The Entropy Weight–Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is applied to analyze the spatiotemporal evolution of ecological environment resilience