Construction land, as the core spatial carrier of urban expansion, is characterized by rigid supply and high ecological sensitivity, which implies that urban development activities inevitably generate a long term and complex competitive relationship among construction demand, environmental carrying capacity and the provision of public services (Li et al., 2020; Ouyang et al., 2022). When the pace of construction land expansion exceeds the regenerative capacity of ecological space, or when spatial structural adjustment lags behind the growth of population and industrial demand, ULUC becomes manifest within the city. This conflict is reflected not only in the continuous encroachment of construction activities on available space, but also in the excessive land occupation by roads, infrastructure and production facilities, which undermines ecosystem functions, degrades environmental quality and disrupts spatial equilibrium. In this context, the combination of production factors, the structure of energy use and the efficiency of development are all significantly affected. As urban land supply becomes increasingly constrained, local governments and enterprises are compelled to reassess extensive, land consuming growth trajectories by upgrading the industrial structure toward more advanced and greener sectors, strengthening the spatial reorganization and fine grained allocation of different functional zones, and accelerating the emergence of an urban development model characterized by compact agglomeration, mixed land use and highly efficient connections (Xu et al., 2022). This strategic shift not only improves the spatial matching efficiency of production factors such as land, capital and labor, but also contributes to reducing energy consumption and environmental pressure, thereby providing stronger external discipline and sustained impetus for the formation, diffusion and consolidation of green production modes (Zhang et al., 2022). Therefore, ULUC may, under certain conditions, give rise to an “efficiency forcing effect” on USP, the net outcome of which depends on the intensity of land pressure, the stage of economic growth, the capacity of urban governance and the structure of the industrial base. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is proposed.

Moreover, the impact of ULUC on USP does not follow a uniform linear pattern across cities at different development stages and with different functional roles. Instead, it is shaped by structural disparities in land scarcity, factor agglomeration, environmental carrying capacity and the quality of governance systems, and thus exhibits pronounced regional differentiation (Jiang et al., 2025; Zhang et al., 2022; Zhao et al., 2021). On the one hand, in mega cities and regional core cities, where construction intensity is high, land constraints are pronounced and ecological space is under increasing compression, urban development is more likely to encounter problems such as imbalances in land use structure, encroachment on ecological space and the accumulation of environmental pressures. However, their relatively strong industrial bases, greater technological capacity and more developed institutional arrangements enable these cities to mitigate the resource pressures generated by land use conflict. By optimizing spatial structure, promoting the redevelopment of existing land and accelerating the diffusion of green technologies, they are able to convert part of this pressure into a driving force for improving land use efficiency and advancing the greening of production modes. On the other hand, in small and medium sized cities, resource based cities and those located on the periphery of regional systems, a heavily industrialized economic structure, relatively underdeveloped infrastructure, and limited governance capacity and regulatory enforcement mean that land use conflict is more likely to manifest as extensive expansion, environmental degradation and resources misallocation, thereby exerting a more pronounced suppressing effect on USP. In light of these contents, this study advances the following research hypothesis.

GI, as a central engine for transforming the development paradigm from factor driven to innovation driven growth, operates through technological and institutional arrangements such as energy conservation, emission reduction and resource recycling. By enhancing the efficiency of factor allocation and the environmental performance of production processes, GI facilitates a relative decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption and pollutant emissions, thereby serving as a critical nexus in reconciling economic expansion with ecological carrying capacity (Si et al., 2025; Yan et al., 2023). Under conditions of steadily rising construction intensity, tightening spatial supply and the progressive compression of ecological space, ULUC increases the marginal costs of extensive land development and of high energy consumption, high emission growth patterns. Consequently, in order to sustain economic growth and maintain competitive advantages, local governments and enterprises are compelled to ease land and environmental constraints by optimizing the land use structure, raising output per unit of land, and adopting clean technologies and green investment (Ma et al., 2020; Tian et al., 2025). This process of pressure transmission drives capital, technology and skilled labor to concentrate in industries and projects with stronger green attributes, thereby increasing the level of GI, which, through improved resource allocation efficiency and reduced energy and environmental costs, is ultimately translated into higher USP. Accordingly, GI can be regarded as a central mechanism through which ULUC influences USP. On the one hand, a moderate level of ULUC reinforces resource constraints and reshapes expectations, thereby stimulating GI; on the other hand, GI improves technological efficiency and environmental performance, partially internalizing land and spatial pressures into a driving force for transforming the development model. Drawing on these, this paper advances the following research hypothesis.

As a major fiscal instrument for supporting ecological conservation and pollution abatement, FEE essentially strengthens environmental governance capacity and facilitates the internalization of external costs associated with emissions and extensive land development. This, in turn, induces enterprises and local authorities operating under binding land constraints to re-evaluate the payoff and risk profile of expansion oriented development, and to reorient spatial utilization, technology investment and industrial configuration toward modes that are more energy saving, intensive and low carbon (Xiong et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2025). In regions where fiscal expenditure on environmental protection is inadequate, ULUC tends to be reflected merely in spatial congestion and environmental degradation, without sufficient public financial support for pollution control and ecological restoration. Under such conditions, it is difficult to impose substantive constraints on firms' technological choices and on governmental development patterns, and the negative effects of ULUC on USP are correspondingly less likely to be alleviated. By contrast, in regions with relatively high levels of FEE, public spending strengthens pollution control capacity, intensifies ecological restoration efforts and raises the opportunity cost of extensive, land hungry development. As a result, land use conflict and fiscal constraints interact in a mutually reinforcing manner, making it more likely that relevant actors will alleviate resource and environmental pressures through the adoption of green technologies, optimization of industrial structure and more economical, intensive land use practices, thereby weakening, and in some cases offsetting, the adverse impact of ULUC on USP. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is proposed.

Through a range of financial instruments, including bank credit, bond financing and investment funds, GFS directs capital toward energy efficient, environmentally friendly, technologically innovative and ecologically restorative projects. This process substantively relaxes the financing constraints that green projects face and enhance the feasibility of such investments within a given risk return structure. Under tightening land constraints and intensifying environmental stress, GFS thus supplies the necessary capital base and market driven stimuli for a shift in the prevailing development pattern (Hou and Shi, 2024; Zhang, 2023). As the costs of urban construction land expansion rise and the negative externalities associated with traditional industries intensify, ULUC undermines the sustainability of extensive growth patterns (Deng and Zhang, 2025). The introduction of green finance, by improving capital allocation and strengthening credit support for green projects, encourages cities operating under binding land constraints to favor the development of green technologies, high value added industries and intensive land use models. As a result, it partially offsets the adverse productivity effects generated by conflict induced pressures and allowing innovation and efficiency gains to become new sources of growth under land constrained conditions. Based on the foregoing analysis, the following research hypothesis is proposed:

ISU operates by promoting the reallocation of production factors from low efficiency to high efficiency sectors, and by enhancing technological absorptive capacity, innovation efficiency, and resource use efficiency, fundamentally transforming the mode of urban growth under binding land, capital and environmental constraints (You and Zhang, 2022; Zheng et al., 2021). Against the backdrop of persistently tightening urban spatial supply, the stage of industrial structural development determines both a city's capacity to respond to ULUC and its ability to absorb the resulting constraint pressures (Ma et al., 2020). When the industrial structure is still at a low or middle stage, production activities rely heavily on the expansion of construction land and energy intensive inputs. Under such conditions, ULUC tends to aggravate factor misallocation, increase environmental burdens and raise resource costs, thereby suppressing improvements in USP. Once the industrial structure passes a certain developmental threshold and moves onto a more advanced trajectory, however, high technology industries and modern services exhibit marked advantages in resource use efficiency, pollution emissions and spatial land occupation. Cities can then draw on technological upgrading, industrial restructuring and spatial optimization to cushion the effects of land scarcity and environmental stress, thereby weakening, and potentially even reversing, the inhibitory impact of ULUC on USP. Taken together, ISU not only shapes the structural logic through which ULUC emerges, but also reshapes the strength and direction of the channels by which ULUC affects USP, causing their relationship to exhibit pronounced stage dependence. On this basis, the following research hypothesis is proposed.

As one of China's national strategic regions with the greatest comprehensive development potential, the YRB traverses the eastern, central, and western regions of the country, encompassing 11 provinces and municipalities along the river and accounting for roughly 20% of the national land area and about 40% of the country's total population and GDP (Liu et al., 2022). This region not only exhibits, in spatial terms, a gradient development pattern composed of upstream ecological barrier zones, midstream industrial load bearing areas, and downstream innovation hubs, but also displays pronounced regional heterogeneity and structural complexity in relation to urbanization dynamics, land resource reconfiguration, industrial transformation and upgrading, and green development constraints (Wang et al., 2025). However, against the combined backdrop of rapid economic expansion, accelerated urban spatial sprawl, and mounting ecological and environmental pressures in the YRB, ULUC has become particularly pronounced, GI capacity exhibits marked differentiation within the region, and USP is profoundly affected by binding resource and environmental constraints. Accordingly, this study takes the YRB as the research area, which makes it possible to identify spatial differences in the mechanisms of ULUC and GI within an integrated urban gradient system, while also assessing the applicability and universality of green development paths under conditions of high development intensity, severe resource constraints, and strong policy interventions. In this way, the analysis yields representative and transferable empirical evidence for promoting national level land use spatial optimization, green and low carbon transition, and coordinated regional development.

Following the official classification of the YRB, cities in the sample are divided into upper, middle, and lower reaches according to their geographical location along the main stream of the YRB¹. As shown by the heterogeneity analysis in Table 6, the impact of ULUC on USP displays clear spatial heterogeneity. Specifically, in the upper reaches of the YRB, the coefficient of ULUC is 0.359 and significantly positive at the 1% level, indicating that in upstream cities where resource and environmental constraints are relatively pronounced and the industrial structure remains in a transitional stage, tight land constraints may, through a forcing mechanism, promote improvements in spatial utilization efficiency, industrial restructuring, and the diffusion of green production modes, thereby significantly enhancing USP. However, in the middle and lower reaches, the coefficients of ULUC are −0.018 and 0.119, respectively, and both are statistically insignificant. This suggests that the impact of conflict on USP in these two subregions is characterized by “effect offset” and “pressure attenuation”. From a structural perspective, cities in the middle and lower reaches are generally at more advanced stages of industrial upgrading, where the marginal productivity gains from further land use tightening tend to diminish. In addition, relatively stronger fiscal capacity and infrastructure endowments in these regions enable local governments to buffer land scarcity through stock land redevelopment and inter regional factor reallocation, thereby weakening the disciplining effect of land use conflict on USP. Moreover, heterogeneity in local governance capacity and regulatory enforcement may also contribute to the insignificant coefficients, as land use conflicts in some localities are not fully internalized into binding constraints on production modes or GI incentives. This does not imply the absence of land use conflict in these regions, but rather indicates that its potential effects on USP are mediated or attenuated by region specific structural and institutional conditions. These results provide empirical support for Hypothesis 2.

To determine the appropriate specification of the threshold model, this study first performs a full sample threshold effect model test, using the F and p-values generated by the Bootstrap method to infer the number of thresholds in the model. As shown in Table 11, when ISU is used as the threshold variable for USP, the null hypothesis of no threshold is rejected in favor of a single threshold model at the 1% significance level, whereas the double threshold test is not significant. The analysis therefore adopts a single threshold specification. Furthermore, as shown in Table 12 and Figure 2, the estimated threshold value for the single threshold model is 0.7945, with a 95% confidence interval of [0.7891, 0.7958], indicating that the impact of ULUC on USP changes significantly when the ISU level reaches 0.7945.

After determining the single threshold value, the parameters are estimated, and the results are reported in Table 13. When ISU remains below 0.7945, indicating that the industrial structure has not yet reached a relatively advanced stage, the estimated coefficient of ULUC on USP is 0.017 and statistically insignificant, suggesting that the influence of ULUC on USP is limited at lower levels of industrial upgrading. At this stage, urban economies tend to rely heavily on land- and resource-intensive industries, while technological spillovers and factor reallocation mechanisms are not yet sufficiently mature. Under such circumstances, land use conflict primarily operates as a constraint, rather than as an effective stimulus for efficiency improvement or green transformation. By contrast, once ISU reaches or exceeds 0.7945, the coefficient of ULUC on USP rises to 0.191 and becomes statistically significant at the 1% level, indicating that a higher degree of industrial upgrading markedly amplifies the positive effect of ULUC on USP. At this point, the industrial structure shifts toward technology and knowledge intensive sectors, with production processes relying less on extensive land inputs and more on innovation, human capital, and organizational efficiency. In this context, land use conflict is increasingly internalized as a disciplinary mechanism that fosters GI and enhances overall production efficiency. Accordingly, the estimated threshold reflects a qualitative transformation in the role of land constraints, from a limiting condition to a catalyst for sustainable urban productivity. This finding provides an important theoretical basis for policy-making, indicating that advancing the sophistication of the industrial structure can effectively alleviate land resource constraints and promote high quality improvements in urban sustainable development.

This study identifies a significant positive association between ULUC and USP. Under conditions of increasingly tight land resource constraints and rising ecological pressure, cities are compelled to adjust their land use structures and advance green transformation, thereby, to some extent, converting spatial stress into a driving force for improving production efficiency and environmental performance. In theoretical terms, this conclusion diverges from the conventional view that land use conflict restricts economic growth and diminishes social welfare (Ding and Lichtenberg, 2011; Mahtta et al., 2022). In addition, from the perspective of regional heterogeneity, the impact of ULUC on USP exhibits marked spatial variation across different areas. In the upper reaches of the YRB, the positive association between ULUC and USP is particularly pronounced, indicating that resource constraints and industrial transformation have prompted upstream cities to respond more actively in pursuing green development. By contrast, economic development in the middle reaches continues to rely on high consumption industrial transformation, while in the lower reaches the industrial structure is relatively more advanced; however, in neither region has the negative impact of ULUC been effectively converted into a driving force for green transition. This finding suggests that urban land management policies could be flexibly and adaptively adjusted at different stages and under different contextual conditions in order to respond to evolving environmental pressures and developmental needs.

GI plays a mediating role in the effect of ULUC on USP. ULUC significantly promotes improvements in the level of GI, which subsequently enhances USP. This mechanism is consistent with the argument that environmental pressure induces policy innovation by urban governments. Under conditions of tight land constraints and rising ecological stress, such pressures stimulate technological progress, industrial upgrading, and GI, thereby enhancing cities' capacity to address environmental challenges (Sperling and Arler, 2020; Zeng et al., 2022). Moreover, the moderation analysis highlights the roles of FEE and GFS in shaping the impact of ULUC on USP. By increasing financial resources devoted to green technology R&D and improving the market responsiveness of GI, FEE and GFS strengthen the extent to which the resource scarcity signals transmitted by ULUC are converted into effective drivers of development. In cities with relatively strong GFS, land use conflict is particularly prone to being transformed into a force that promotes both GI and USP. The moderating effects of GFS and FEE strengthen the efficiency with which land use conflict is converted into a driving force for green development, underscoring the critical role of policy instruments in advancing the green transition. This finding is highly consistent with the arguments of (Shen et al. 2020) and (Islam 2025), who emphasize the importance of environmental policy tools in promoting sustainable development and GI.

ISU exhibits a pronounced threshold effect in the relationship between ULUC and USP. When the industrial structure remains at a relatively low level, the impact of ULUC on USP is weak and statistically insignificant, indicating that, in the absence of sufficient structural optimization, land use conflict has not yet been effectively transformed into a driving force for GI and improvements in resource use efficiency. However, as the industrial structure becomes more advanced, the impact of ULUC on USP strengthens markedly and exhibits a pronounced positive effect. This finding confirms the crucial role of industrial structure optimization in alleviating land resource constraints, promoting GI, and enhancing USP. According to the threshold model, the critical value of ISU is 0.7945. This indicates that once the ISU level reaches this benchmark, the negative effect of ULUC is substantially attenuated and is transformed into a positive driving force. This result provides a strong theoretical basis for policymakers and underscores the importance of raising the level of ISU in order to promote green development and high quality urban development.

This study advances the existing literature along three principal dimensions. Firstly, it moves beyond the conventional perspective by arguing that ULUC is not merely a negative constraint on productivity, but can, under certain conditions, operate as an external source of pressure that drives GI and the optimization of urban spatial structure. Secondly, it introduces GI and environmental policy instruments as key mechanism variables, thereby broadening understanding of the channels through which land use conflict exerts its effects and providing a new analytical lens for the design of green development policies. Thirdly, through threshold effect analysis, it reveals the critical role of ISU in shaping the impact of ULUC, offering a theoretical basis for policy formulation.

However, despite the theoretical relevance and empirical value of this study, several aspects merit further refinement. Firstly, the empirical investigation focuses on urban agglomerations in the YRB. While this region is highly representative, the general applicability of the findings still needs to be further tested, particularly in areas differ in terms of economic development level and resource endowments. Secondly, the analysis does not fully incorporate the potential influence of external shocks, such as global pandemics and international economic fluctuations, on the relationship between ULUC and USP. Future research could extend the present framework by explicitly examining this relationship under scenarios shaped by major external shocks.

This study investigates the impact of ULUC on USP and shows that, under specific conditions, increasing land resource constraints and ecological pressure can drive cities toward green transformation and improvements in USP. The main findings are as follows: (1) ULUC exerts a significant positive effect on USP, and this effect displays marked regional heterogeneity. Cities in the upper reaches of the YRB exhibit a clear positive response, whereas those in the middle and lower reaches have not yet effectively converted ULUC into a driving force for urban sustainable development. (2) GI functions as an important mediating variable between ULUC and USP. By fostering technological progress and industrial upgrading, GI strengthens the capacity of cities to undertake green transformation. At the same time, policy instruments such as FEE and GFS play a significant moderating role in this process and amplify the positive effect of ULUC. (3) ISU exerts a pronounced threshold effect in the relationship between ULUC and USP. Once the ISU level reaches a certain standard, the negative impact of ULUC is attenuated and is transformed into a positive driving force for USP, indicating the crucial role of industrial structure optimization in alleviating land constraints and promoting green transition.

In light of the above empirical findings, this study proposes the following policy implications. (1) Local governments are suggested to design targeted land use and green transition policies that are consistent with regional land resource constraints and the prevailing stage of industrial development. In particular, in upstream sections of the basin where resource constraints are especially acute, it is necessary to accelerate the development of green industries and the optimization of spatial structure. (2) Policies that foster GI could be regarded as a core instrument for addressing ULUC. The expansion of financial support for GI in more cities can strengthen their capacity to cope with environmental constraints. With the backing of GFS and FEE, in particular, urban governments are better positioned to convert the pressure arising from land use conflict into momentum for green development. (3) The optimization of the industrial structure is fundamental to relieving land resource constraints and advancing green transition. Policymakers can actively promote the upgrading of the industrial structure, especially in cities where low end industries account for a large share of economic activity, by improving both the pace and the quality of industrial upgrading so as to enhance land use efficiency and the sustainability of green productivity.