Does urbanization drive economic growth decoupled from energy consumption in China’s logistics?

Logistics has gradually become a major energy consumer in China along with urbanization and e-commerce. A better understanding of economic growth decoupled from energy consumption in logistics could relieve the pressure of energy supply and environmental pollution. A combined model based on the Tapio decoupling model, Kaya identity and Log-Mean Divisia Index was proposed to decompose the impact of urbanization into 4 related factors. Comparative analysis was applied to investigate the similarities of and differences in the urbanization-related factors affecting the decoupling state of provinces. The main results were as follows: (1) Weak decoupling was the dominant state of logistics in China during 2007–2016. There were weak decoupling and strong decoupling in most of the observation period in the eastern region, while there was no strong decoupling in the central and western regions. (2) From the national perspective, urbanization-related factors had very significant but different impacts. Population quantity, spatial structure and spatial expansion were the key inhibitors, while population density was the main contributor. (3) From the regional perspective, the patterns of urbanization-related factors in the three regions were similar. Population density had a positive but decreasing effect on decoupling in the three regions, especially the western region. Population quantity had an increasing negative effect on decoupling in the three regions, especially the central and western regions. Spatial expansion had an increasing negative effect on decoupling in the eastern and western regions but a decreasing negative effect in the central region; and spatial structure had a stable negative effect on the three regions. Finally, some policy implications were proposed. •The decoupling relationship of economic growth from energy consumption of logistics was investigated.•The effect of urbanization on economic growth decoupled from energy consumption of logistics was decomposed in detailed.•Comparative analysis was conducted to discovering the different mechanism of urbanization related factors.