Spatio–Temporal Evolutionary Features and Drivers of Green Competitiveness of Cities Surrounding the Yellow River

Abstract

Based on the scientific concept of city green competitiveness, an integrated evaluation indicator system was established to use the entropy method in order to measure the green competitiveness index of 78 cities surrounding the Yellow River (YR) from 2006 to 2020. Further, the spatio–temporal features and drivers of city green competitiveness were analyzed using various methods. The research found the following: (1) Although the green competitiveness of cities surrounding the YR has been growing steadily, the overall level is not high. (2) The green competitiveness of cities surrounding the YR can be spatially characterized as “downstream > midstream > upstream”; the absolute and relative differences between cities are both increasing, and overall differences stem mainly from the hypervariable density. (3) The positive spatial correlation between the green competitiveness of cities surrounding the YR is significant, with the “cold spot” in southeastern Gansu and the “hot spot” in the Shandong Peninsular city cluster. (4) The level of city infrastructure construction, the level of urbanization, and science and technology innovation are the main drivers of the green competitiveness of cities surrounding the YR. In addition, the interaction forces of each factor were found to be much stronger than the effects of individual factors.