Coupling coordination of human settlements environment and residents’ well-being in China’s mega-cities and its influencing factors

Human settlements environment have an important impact on residents’ health, livability, and well-being, which has attracted widespread concern worldwide. Residents’ well-being serves as a barometer of social progress and a key value pursued in urban development. There exists a close correlation between residents’ well-being and the human settlements environment. However, few studies have paid attention to Coupling Coordination of them. Based on systems theory and sustainable development theory, this study constructs an index system for the human settlements environment and residents’ well-being. And we empirically analyze 7 mega-cities data in China from 2011 to 2023 by employing the entropy method, coupling coordination model, and gray correlation analysis, and discusses the coupling coordination mechanisms and their influencing factors. The results indicate that the constructed evaluation index system possesses strong measurement validity and can better measure the human settlements environment, residents’ well-being and their coupling coordination in mega-cities. The degree of coupling coordination between the human settlements environment and residents’ well-being in mega-cities has gradually increased, transitioning from the basic to the moderated coordination stage. The human settlements environment and residents’ well-being in mega-cities mutually influence each other. Factors such as average years of education for the population aged 15 and above, population density, per capita retail sales of consumer goods, number of buses per 10,000 people and education spending as a percentage of government expenditure exert significant impact on the coupling coordination and exhibit a strong correlation.