Green Development Performance Evaluation Based on Dual Perspectives of Level and Efficiency: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

In the context of continuing to promote the construction of an ecological civilization, it is of great significance to explore green development performance. However, most of the literature is based on a single perspective of level or efficiency, lacking a comprehensive examination of both. It is not scientific to explore how to promote green development only from a single perspective, which may be a new advancement by breaking the conventional thinking focusing only on level or efficiency. On this basis, we first established evaluation index systems of green development performance based on a theoretical framework. Furthermore, green development performance was measured with the entropy weight technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and super-EBM models, and finally, we analyzed the spatial and temporal evolution patterns of green development performance using the ESDA method and examined its influencing factors with a geographic detector (GD) and econometric models. The main results were as follows: (1) The trend of the green development level in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2004 to 2017 had an inverted “N” shape, while the overall average green development efficiency continuously increased. (2) In terms of spatial and temporal patterns, both the green development level and green development efficiency showed “high in the east and low in the west” spatial divergence characteristics. In terms of the spatial and temporal evolution pattern of the green development level, the L-L clusters were mainly distributed in the western region. However, for green development efficiency, the L-L clusters were mostly distributed around the H-H clusters. (3) The results of the influencing factor analysis indicated that industrial structure and people’s welfare are still important factors of the green development level. The improvement of green development efficiency was mainly driven by economic development, and the inhibiting effect of energy consumption is significant. In addition, the effect of opening up has not yet changed from a “pollution paradise” to a “pollution halo”.