Identifying Focal Indicators for Localized SDG 14-Aligned Evaluation in China’s Coastal Provinces Through an Integrated Assessment Framework

Identifying focal indicators is essential for improving localized SDG 14-aligned assessment amid diverse pressures and governance challenges in coastal areas. However, indicator-level diagnosis remains constrained by the lack of a coherent and unified assessment framework. Focusing on 11 coastal provinces of China, this study constructs a localized SDG 14-aligned indicator system based on the pressure-state-response (PSR) framework, evaluates indicators in terms of score, interaction, and network centrality, and integrates these components into a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) framework to identify focal indicators for coastal sustainable development. The results show that the share of tertiary marine industries is identified as a high-scoring positive-interaction central indicator, while fishing vessel tonnage per capacity unit is identified as a high-scoring trade-off-related central indicator. In addition, fishery economic output per GDP is identified as a low-scoring-trade-off-related central indicator. These findings suggest that future coastal development should place greater emphasis on marine industrial upgrading, fishing-capacity regulation, and the coordinated improvement of fishery economic benefits and sustainability performance, so as to create more favorable conditions for strengthening synergistic development. The proposed framework supports indicator-level diagnosis and differentiated management attention for localized coastal sustainable development.