Spatiotemporal characteristics and influencing factors of the coupling coordinated development of production-living-ecology system in China

•The coordination of PLE system is critical to the sustainable development.•The coupling index of PLE system has agglomeration characteristics.•Social investment and terrain condition are main factors for PLE.•The influencing factors for PLE has spatiotemporal heterogeneity. The coupling coordinated development of production-living-ecology (PLE) system is of great importance to sustainable development. However, the influencing factors for the coupling coordinated development of PLE system remain poorly understood, especially in terms of spatial and temporal differences among the main factors. In this study, we chose the panel data of 295 China’s prefecture-level cities from 2007 to 2019 to explore the spatiotemporal characteristics and influencing factors of the coupling coordinated development of PLE system using coupling model, spatial regression model, GTWR model and K-means clustering method. From our results, the coupling index of PLE system showed an increasing trend with the spatial agglomeration. Social investment, terrain condition, infrastructure, and internet development are main factors affecting the coupling coordinated development of PLE system, and different influencing factors have different effects in different regions and different periods. The targeted policies should be combined with the effects of main influencing factors in different regions and different periods. We hope that this study can provide a valuable reference for the coupling coordination of PLE system and sustainable development.