Governments are responsible for identify instruments that can ameliorate global warming. Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause of global warming, CO 2 emissions accounted for 78% during the period from 1970 to 2010. The focus of CO 2 emission reduction is on fossil energy consumption, whereas CO 2 generated by land use changes caused by human activities is ignored. In China, energy saving and emission reduction have attracted considerable interest in view of environmental pollution and excessive resource consumption due to rapid economic growth and urban expansion. International organizations have been committed to carbon emission reduction for the mitigation of global warming. The definition of eco-efficiency was first proposed by Schaltegger and Sturm in 1990 the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) defines it as the product of price competition advantage, which can satisfy human needs and improve living standards, as well as the impact on the ecological environment and resource consumption gradually reduced to and forecast of earth bearing level of the same level and achieve the coordinated development of environment and society. Adjusting the ownership structure and increasing the proportion of green achievements in the promotion and assessment of officials are important measures in the upgrading of eco-efficiency. The effect of ER on eco-efficiency changes from negative to positive with the increase of IS level. This finding further verifies that the ER for eco-efficiency under the constraint of land use carbon emission conforms to the Porter hypothesis. Reasonable ER can reduce cost by stimulating the innovation of green production technology and achieves a win-win situation between environment and output.
LM has a promotional effect on eco-efficiency, which differs in the promotion before and after promotion across the threshold value. Technical innovation and land marketization (LM) shows double threshold, whereas industrial structure (IS) has a single threshold effect. Results from empirical tests reveal that eco-efficiency in China during the study period has an upward trend, and the spatial and temporal distribution of eco-efficiency is unbalanced and concentrated. The nonlinear relationship between ER and eco-efficiency is observed with a panel threshold model. This paper uses a method combining mixed directional distance function and bootstrapping approach to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of eco-efficiency under the constraint of land use carbon emission in China from 2004 to 2016. Eco-efficiency has been receiving attention worldwide, and the effective implementation of environmental regulations (ERs) has become crucial to regional eco-efficiency.