Spatial Inequality and Transition Dynamics of Urban Land Green-Use Efficiency in the Yellow River Basin: Evidence from Seven Urban Agglomerations

Against the backdrop of China’s advancing strategy for ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin, improving urban land green-use efficiency is critical to reconciling ecological conservation, resource efficiency, and coordinated regional development. Using data for 64 cities across seven urban agglomerations, this study applies a Super-SBM model to estimate urban land green-use efficiency from 2012 to 2024 and combines Dagum Gini decomposition, kernel density estimation, and conventional and spatial Markov chains to examine its spatial disparities and dynamic evolution. Four principal findings emerge. First, efficiency increased overall but exhibited a clear spatial gradient, with higher levels in the upper and middle reaches and lower levels downstream. Second, overall disparities initially widened, subsequently narrowed, and rebounded slightly toward the end of the study period. Between-agglomeration disparities were the largest component on average and during most of the study period; however, their contribution declined, and transvariation density became the largest component in 2023–2024, indicating greater overlap among the efficiency distributions of urban agglomerations. Third, both within- and between-agglomeration disparities exhibited marked heterogeneity, with distinct trajectories across and within urban agglomerations. Fourth, the conventional Markov-chain analysis revealed strong state persistence, a pronounced tendency for high-efficiency states to persist, and transitions occurring predominantly between adjacent classes. The spatial Markov results further showed that local transition probabilities varied across neighborhood efficiency conditions. Overall, efficiency disparities did not exhibit sustained unidirectional convergence; instead, they were characterized by phased adjustment, increasing cross-agglomeration overlap, and neighborhood-conditioned state transitions. By establishing a sequential framework of “efficiency measurement–disparity decomposition–distributional evolution–state transition,” this study provides empirical evidence for understanding the spatial disparities and dynamic evolution of urban land green-use efficiency in the Yellow River Basin.