Determinants of Spatial Heterogeneity in Regional Agricultural Economic Development: A GeoDetec-tor-Based Analysis

Regional agricultural development is spatially heterogeneous because environmental, economic, infrastructural and security conditions differ across territories. This study identifies the principal determinants of agricultural economic performance in 24 districts of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts using GIS and GeoDetector. Fourteen variables derived from official statistics, remote sensing, infrastructure and conflict data were assessed with the factor, interaction, ecological and risk detectors. Capital investment had the highest explanatory power (q = 0.8745), followed by NDVI (q = 0.5284) and road density (q = 0.3691). The strongest interaction was between capital investment and arable land (q = 0.9727). Security variables had modest individual effects but substantially stronger interactions with capital investment. Sensitivity analysis, Global Moran's I and leave-one-district-out tests confirmed the stability of the principal result. The findings show that agricultural disparities in the study area are shaped primarily by investment capacity and its interaction with environmental, infrastructure and security conditions, supporting spatially differentiated recovery and agricultural policy.