Spatio-Temporal Patterns and Driving Factors of Green Development Level of Urban Agglomerations in the Yellow River Basin

Promoting green development (GD) is key for the Yellow River Basin (YRB) to step into the phase of high-quality development. This study constructs a green development level (GDL) evaluation system based on the PSR (Pressure-State-Response) model, and estimates the GDL of urban agglomerations (UAs) in the YRB from 2008 to 2019 using the entropy weight-TOPSIS model. Then the Moran'I and the Theil index are adopted to explore the spatio-temporal patterns of the GDL, and the Geo-detector is used to investigate the driving factors of the GDL. The results suggest that: (1) The GDL of UAs in the YRB is characterized by "low growth" and "unbalanced," with a general pattern of "east-west prominence but central collapse". (2) The GDL in the YRB shows significant spatial correlation characteristic. (3) The main sources of regional variation of the GDL in the UAs is inter-group differences in 2008-2013 and intra-group differences in 2014-2019. (4) The main driver of the differences of the GDL is economic development, and the effect of the interaction of any two driving factors is greater than that of the single factor.