City Green Economy Evaluation: Empirical Evidence from 15 Sub-Provincial Cities in China

City green economy plays an important role in the development of low-carbon economy and the achievement of sustainable development of economy, society and ecological environment. From the perspective of economy, society, environment and resources, the evaluation of the green economy in urban areas tends to offer us a new insight into the green economy of cities. This paper is about the creation of a novel urban green economy evaluation model and its application. First of all, we established a city green economy evaluation index system based on R cluster analysis and coefficient of variation. Secondly, based on the nonlinear weighted utilizing entropy weight method, a city green economy evaluation model is established based on inferior constraints. Thirdly, by comparing the differences between evaluation rankings under inferior constraints and non-inferior constraints, the advantageous factors and the disadvantageous ones in urban green economy development are obtained. The proposed model has been verified with the data on 15 sub-provincial cities in China. Empirical analysis results show that: (1) The proposed approach can accurately find out the advantageous and disadvantageous factors for each sub-provincial city; (2) In the evaluation of green economy development, the order of importance of the three criterion layers is X1 Economy development > X2 Social livelihood of the people > X3 Resources and environment; (3) Local governments should implement differential, reasonable policies in order to improve their green economy development. Moreover, our research is not only significant for developing green economy in China’s sub-provincial cities, but also serves as a reference for the development of green economy in other cities in the world.