An Assessment of Recycling Efficiency of Reclaimed Water under the Digital Economy Scenario using Multiple Linear Regression

The development of the economy has led to the development of productivity while adversely affecting resource security and the ecological environment. Reclaimed water can alleviate water shortage and promote environmental protection. The digital economy, as a new economic form, is of great significance in improving the utilization efficiency of reclaimed water. In this paper, relevant data from 2018-2020 of 29 cities in China are used to measure the reclaimed water utilization efficiency and its spatial and temporal changes through a dynamic two-stage SBM (Slack-Based Measurement) model and a center of gravity shift model. The results show that the digital economy can improve the efficiency of reclaimed water utilization, and the higher the level of development of the digital economy, the more obvious the amount of improvement. The efficiency of reclaimed water utilization in the production and living stage is higher than that in the wastewater treatment stage, and the coordination between the stages needs to be strengthened. In addition, a comparative analysis of prediction models was conducted to predict the reclaimed water reuse rate (RRR). The experimental results demonstrate that MLR outperforms other models in terms of Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), and R².