Evaluation and Spatiotemporal Differentiation of Rural Development in the Yangtze River Delta, China

This study constructed a system for evaluation of regional rural development using the Yangtze River Delta region of China as an example. The improved entropy method was used to assess the level of rural development, and GIS spatial analysis, ESDA model, and a multiple regression model were used to analyze the differentiating characteristics and influencing factors of rural development in the Yangtze River Delta during 2000-2018. Results show that rural development exhibited an evolving trend of continuous improvement. Rural development decreased from east to west and an inverted U-type spatial pattern was presented from south to north, and the rural development of Yangtze River Delta showed positive autocorrelation. Local hot spots were concentrated primarily in the Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou-Shanghai and Hangzhou-Shaoxing-Ningbo regions, while cold spots were distributed mostly in northern Anhui, forming a stable low-value clustering and differentiation pattern. Economic social development, agricultural modernization, urbanization, and traffic accessibility were important factors affecting the spatiotemporal differentiation of rural development, while policy and institutional factors had a macro guiding effect on rural development differentiation in the Yangtze River Delta region.