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• The study considers the green development evaluation with imprecise economic data. • It proposes the interval slacks-based global Malmquist–Luenberger index model. • It shows a new pattern of regional differences in China's green development. • A dynamic spatial model is employed to examine factors driving green development. • Heterogeneous modes of green development are found in regional differences. A better understanding of regional differences in green development (GD) is crucial to achieving the sustainability goals in China's high-quality development stage. Data envelopment analysis–based productivity indexes, which link multiple inputs and multiple outputs, have been widely used to evaluate GD. However, most of these models do not take into account the imprecision of regional economic data due to over- or under-reporting by local governments. Here, to alleviate the GD calculation errors due to point estimation as far as possible, we propose a novel global Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index with the interval slacks-based measure to evaluate the provincial green total factor productivity (GTFP) in China from 2000 to 2018. The results showed that the overall GTFP in China during the study period exhibits an increasingly upward trend, accompanied by a declining and converging growth rate in recent years. Moreover, we found an emerging shift in the patterns of inter-regional GTFP from “East–Center–West” to “South–North”, as the differences in the GTFP between the eastern, central and western regions shrink while the gap between the southern and the northern regions expands. A further impact mechanism analysis based on dynamic spatial Durbin panel models revealed that the green development mode in the central, western and northern regions is more exogenously government-dependent, whereas that in the eastern and southern regions is more endogenously market-driven. These findings provide a new reference for optimizing the relationship between the market and government and coordinating the regional green development of China.

New patterns in China's regional green development: An interval Malmquist–Luenberger productivity analysis