Spatial Differentiation of Digital Rural Development and Influencing Factors in the Yellow River Basin, China

The new development mode represented by the digital economy has provided new ideas for sustainable rural development. To comprehensively understand the status of digital rural development and propose scientific measures of rural revitalization in the Yellow River Basin (YRB), this study used counties as the research unit and data from 2020 to analyze the spatial differentiation characteristics and influencing factors by employing the Theil index, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and a geodetector model. The results showed that the digital rural development index in the YRB is slightly higher than it is in China overall, but the sub-index for the digital economy is lagging. The levels of digital rural development in the different reaches were lower reaches > middle reaches > upper reaches. Additionally, municipal districts and county-level cities have higher statuses than t general counties. Moreover, the decomposition of the Theil index shows that the intra-group differences in the upper reaches and general counties are the most important cause of the total differences. Moreover, the levels of digital rural development demonstrate spatial differences, with high and low levels in the east and west, respectively. An obvious reliable spatial correlation exists, and the spatial agglomeration featured with a similar level is significant. Finally, the influencing factors of spatial heterogeneity of digital rural development in the YRB and different reaches were different, with government expenditure being the main leading factor in the YRB and its upper reaches, while educational attainment and industrial structure are the leading factors in the middle reaches and lower reaches, respectively. The explanatory power of the interactions between the factors far exceeds that of a single factor, as shown through double-factor and nonlinear enhancement. This study provides a scientific reference for facilitating more targeted policy measures to achieving the goal of digital China and rural revitalization.