The Yellow River Basin serves as China's primary ecological barrier and economic belt. The achievement of the Yellow River Basin's "double carbon" objective is crucial to China's green and low-carbon development. This study examines the spatial link and network structure of city cluster carbon emission efficiency in the Yellow River Basin, as well as the complexity of the network structure. It focuses not only on the density and centrality of the carbon emission efficiency network from the standpoint of city clusters, but also on the excellent cities and concentration of the city cluster 's internal carbon emission efficiency network. The results show that: (1) The carbon emission efficiency of the Yellow River Basin has been dramatically improved, and the gap between city clusters is narrowing. However, gradient differentiation characteristics between city clusters show the Matthew effect. (2) The distribution of carbon emission efficiency in the Yellow River Basin is unbalanced, roughly showing a decreasing trend from east to west. Lower-level efficiency cities have played a significant role in the evolution of carbon emissions efficiency space. (3) The strength of the carbon emission efficiency network structure in the Yellow River Basin gradually transitions from weakly correlated dominant to weakly and averagely correlated dominant. Among them, the Shandong Peninsula city cluster has the most significant number of connected nodes in the carbon emission efficiency network. In contrast, the emission efficiency network density of the seven city clusters shows different changing trends. Finally, this study suggests recommendations to improve carbon emission efficiency by adopting differentiated governance measures from the perspective of local adaptation and using positive spatial spillover effects.
Keywords: Yellow River Basin; carbon emission efficiency; city cluster; network structure; spatial relationships.