Yan Wang

Rural green development is essential for coordinating ecological protection, rural revitalisation and spatial governance in ecological spaces within urban agglomerations. Taking the Chang-Zhu-Tan Ecological Green Heart region in China as a case study, this study evaluates rural green development in 10 counties, county-level cities and districts from 2013 to 2022. A combined weighting–TOPSIS model is used to measure development levels, while Global Moran’s I, the Theil index and XGBoost–SHAP are applied to examine spatial patterns, regional disparities and key associated factors. The results show that rural green development improved overall, with the regional average index increasing from 0.315 in 2013 to 0.378 in 2022. High-value areas gradually expanded, and the Changsha group formed the main high-value core, but no statistically significant global spatial clustering was identified. Regional disparities narrowed during the study period, although intra-group disparities, especially within the Zhuzhou group, remained the main source of imbalance. Human capital, medical resources, income level, urbanisation level, PM_2.5 concentration and pesticide use intensity were closely associated with rural green development, with socioeconomic factors generally contributing positively and environmental pressures acting as constraints. These findings suggest that rural green development in ecological green heart regions is a spatially differentiated and multi-factor process, providing empirical evidence for differentiated county-level governance, coordinated ecological protection and rural green transformation in urban agglomerations.