Towards resilience effectiveness: Assessing its patterns and determinants to identify optimal geographic zones

Abstract

Resilience has a critical role to promote human well-being in turbulent environments. However, extensive interventions and stimulus measures not only achieve resilience goals with numerous unacceptable consequences, but also highlight the narrow definition of resilience. The study proposes the concept of resilience effectiveness to constrain the unsustainability of resilience in concept and practice. The resilience effectiveness of Chinese cities in the early stages of the pandemic is first implemented for evaluation based on input-output relationship, and then patterns and determinants are investigated using the GIS methods and the geographically optimal zones-based heterogeneity (GOZH) model. The study finds that the average resilience effectiveness is not high, indicating that China's strong resilience is the loss of safety, greenness, inclusiveness, and efficiency in the early stage of the pandemic. Resilience effectiveness has significant spatial heterogeneity and is dominated by innovation ability. The optimal geographic zones of Chinese cities for resilience effectiveness are identified, revealing that it is a complex and multifactorial process. This paper broadens resilience research and provides implications for city planning in the post-pandemic era.