Research on statistical measurement and spatial and temporal differences of urban economic resilience in the Yangtze River Basin

The entropy weight method was used to construct an economic resilience evaluation index system to evaluate the economic resilience levels of 40 cities in the Yangtze River Basin from 2007 to 2021. The method of subgroup decomposition of Dagum’s Gini coefficient and other methods were utilized to evaluate the evolution of the spatial and temporal differences in the economic resilience of the Yangtze River Basin as a whole and its upper, middle, and lower regions. The results show that from 2007 to 2021, the overall level of economic resilience increased significantly, with the proportion of high resilience cities rising from 0.025 to 0.275 and the proportion of low resilience cities falling from 0.25 to 0.025. The levels of economic resilience of various regions of the Yangtze River Basin exhibit spatial heterogeneity: the lower reaches show the highest resilience, followed by the upper reaches, with the middle reaches being the lowest. The dominant factors causing differences in economic resilience vary over time, mainly due to intra-regional differences from 2007 to 2008 and with hypervariable density contributing the most after 2009. Accordingly, it is proposed that regional stakeholders in the Yangtze River Basin should strengthen synergistic cooperation to enhance the overall economic resilience, and that different cities in each region should adopt targeted measures according to their own characteristics.