Assessment of the Efficiency of Cultivated Land Occupied by Urban and Rural Construction Land in China from 1990 to 2020

The rapid urbanization and economic growth experienced by China in recent years has led to the expansion of construction land. This has resulted in the substantial transformation of cultivated land to construction land. However, the efficiency of cultivated land occupation by construction land, its regional differences, and the urban-rural disparity in China remain unclear. Therefore, using population and land use data, we measured the efficiency of cultivated land occupied by urban and rural construction land in China during 1990–2020 by proposing absolute, differential, and relative efficiency evaluation methods. Our study revealed that the cultivated land area occupied by rural construction land is 22.4% higher than that of urban construction land. The efficiency of cultivated land occupied by construction land in urban areas was higher than that in rural areas. Spatially, the population in the urban and rural construction land-occupied cultivated land area shows a pattern of high in the southeast and low in the northwest. The efficiency of urban and rural construction land-occupied cultivated land increases with increasing urban size. Thus, to improve the efficiency of cultivated land occupied by construction land, the strict control on the urban construction occupation of cultivated land should be loosened, particularly for larger cities, and the control on inefficient construction in rural areas should be tightened