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Sustainable development is essentially a practice way. A great number of the National Sustainable Development pilot Zones (NSDPZs) has been rapidly developed in recent years in China, which is a practice to explore the road of sustainable development. In order to regulate and promote their better development, suitable comprehensive measurement of sustainability is essential. However, few efforts have been made in this regard. This paper aims to fill such a gap by using grey relational analysis to evaluate the development performances, principal component analysis to discuss the influencing factors of 13 pilot zones in Shandong Province from 2009 to 2015. The results showed that the development performances of pilot zones had generally improved, while there were obvious differences between subsystems after years of development. The spatial variations revealed a gradually decreasing trend from east to west as well as from north to south. The development performances of pilot zones were subject to the influence of various factors such as technology, efficiency, and industry. According to the leading factors and their development performances, the 13 pilot zones could be divided into six different types. The difference of dominant influencing factors among pilot zones caused to the difference of development performances. The technological innovation was the endogenous driving force in stimulating high-quality development of pilot zones. These results would not only provide theoretical reference for the establishment of efficient management mechanism of pilot zones in Shandong Province, but also provide practical reference for the effective implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]