Gou, L.; Yang, S., and Ren, L., 2022. Coupling analysis of the quality and quantity of marine economic growth from the perspective of high-quality development. Journal of Coastal Research, 38(1), 218–228. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

The transformation of a marine economy to one based on quality and efficiency is imperative for building maritime power and enabling high-quality marine development. High-quality development can be achieved by developing the marine economy in terms of both quantity and quality. Understanding the coupling between quality and quantity is, therefore, instrumental to governments' decision-making processes, particularly when trying to improve quality and ensure efficiency. This paper presents a case study of China's Shandong Province. After an in-depth discussion on the definition of quality in terms of marine economic growth, a system of indicators was constructed (based on five dimensions) to evaluate the quality of marine economic growth. Following this, a set pair analysis was used to measure the quality. Finally, coupling and coordination models and kernel density estimation were employed to identify patterns in the dynamic coupling between quality and quantity. The results showed that from 2006 to 2016, the quality of marine economic growth in Shandong Province generally followed an upward trend. Furthermore, the growth in quantity was increasingly driven by the trends in quality. However, with a decreasing coupling degree and coupling and coordination degrees between quantity and quality, there is still considerable room to improve coordination.