Resource-based cities in the Yellow River Basin are important pillars of national energy security and regional coordinated development, and their green transformation is closely related to the overall strategy of ecological protection and high-quality development in the basin. This study takes 34 resource-based cities within the basin as the research objects and employs a combination of methods, including the Super Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) model, the Malmquist–Luenberger index, the standard deviational ellipse, the Dagum Gini coefficient, and the geographical detector, to systematically analyze the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics and driving mechanisms of green development efficiency from 2012 to 2022. The results indicate that: (1) green development efficiency shows an overall upward trend, forming a pattern of leading performance in the lower reaches, lagging development in the middle reaches, and accelerated catching-up in the upper reaches, with efficiency improvements jointly driven by technical efficiency enhancement and technological progress; (2) the gravity center of efficiency shifts southwestward overall, and interregional disparities constitute the main source of overall differences; (3) economic development level, science and technology investment, fiscal expenditure, and energy intensity are the key driving factors, with significantly strengthened interactions among multiple factors. From the dual perspectives of basin location and the urban life cycle, this study constructs a multidimensional analytical framework that provides a reference for categorized regulation and coordinated regional governance of resource-based cities.
Li et al. (2026) studied this question.