Regional coordinated development of low-carbon sports industry in China.

This study develops a systematic modeling framework, comprising a prediction model, a super-SBM model, and a spatial autocorrelation analysis model, to explore the spatial-temporal evolution tendencies of development efficiency within China's 30 regions in the low-carbon sports industry from 2006 to 2025. This framework aims to provide theoretical insights for the formulation of more targeted policies. Based on the empirical findings, the main conclusions of this study are as follows: (1) The optimal buffer operator grey prediction model demonstrates the highest accuracy among the prediction models examined. (2) The development efficiency curves of the 30 regions exhibit a significant increasing trend from 2006 to 2021, with values generally peaking between 0.4 and 0.6. (3) Notably, the disparity in development efficiency between developed and less developed regions is expected to progressively widen. (4) The development efficiency of the low-carbon sports industry across the 30 regions typically displays high-high clustering and low-low clustering during China's four five-year plan periods. This underscores the importance and urgency of promoting regional coordinated development within the low-carbon sports industry.