Abstract

Coordinating ecological protection with economic development has become essential for regional sustainability amid intensifying climate-related risks and growing economic uncertainty. This study investigates the coupling coordination between ecological resilience (EcR) and economic resilience (EnR) across 108 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) and 76 cities in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) from 2005 to 2022. By combining the entropy weight method, coupling coordination degree (CCD) model, Dagum Gini coefficient, and XGBoost-SHAP framework, this study examines the temporal dynamics, spatial inequality, and explanatory factors of EcR–EnR coordination. The results show that CCD improved continuously in both regions. The YREB gradually moved into the moderate coordination stage, whereas the YRB remained at a low coordination level despite sustained progress. Spatially, both regions exhibited a downstream–midstream–upstream gradient, but the YREB showed more pronounced spatial differentiation, while the YRB displayed a more balanced improvement pattern, with higher-level coordination gradually shifting from downstream to midstream areas. Overall disparities in CCD narrowed in both regions. Decomposition results reveal that inter-regional differences were the main source of disparity in the YREB, whereas transvariation intensity contributed most to disparity in the YRB. Regarding explanatory factors, green technological innovation made the largest SHAP-based contribution to CCD in the YREB, while digital infrastructure development contributed most in the YRB, with substantial regional variation in factor contributions. By examining EcR–EnR coordination as a dual-resilience coordination process, this study provides basin-based empirical evidence on ecological–economic resilience coordination in two major Chinese river-basin regions. The findings further translate basin-scale coordination patterns into city-level planning and governance implications for land-use regulation, infrastructure layout, urban form, service distribution, and differentiated regional sustainability strategies.

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