Temporal–spatial characteristics of urban land use efficiency of China's 35mega cities based on DEA: Decomposing technology and scale efficiency.

• Super efficiency SBM model is used to reveal temporal and spatial characteristics of urban land use efficiency (ULUE). • The ULUE of China's 35 mega cities is relatively low. • The pure technical efficiency is a major influencing factor of the comprehensive efficiency. • The ULUEs are quite different and show certain regional patterns. • The ULUE is not completely proportional to the level of economic development. This study aims to measure the comprehensive, pure technical, and scale efficiencies of urban land use of China's 35 mega cities from 2008 to 2015 and reveal their temporal and spatial characteristics of urban land use efficiency (ULUE) using a super efficiency slack-based measure (SBM) model. Results show that 1) the ULUE level of China's 35 mega cities is relatively low, and the pure technical efficiency is a major influencing factor of the comprehensive efficiency. 2) From a temporal perspective, the comprehensive, pure technical, and scale efficiencies of the 35 mega cities all show a trend of slow growth; the average annual growth rates of these efficiencies are 1.07%, 0.24%, and 1.16%. 3) From a spatial perspective, the ULUE levels are quite different and show certain regional patterns. 4) The distribution of scale efficiency of urban land use in China is becoming increasingly dispersed from 2008 to 2015, whereas the distribution of pure technical efficiency is becoming increasingly concentrated in the same period. Estimations on pure technical and scale efficiencies are important to investigate the deep-rooted causes of land use inefficiency for filling an important knowledge gap in ULUE studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]