An Evaluation of the Development Performance of Small County Towns and Its Influencing Factors: A Case Study of Small Towns in Jiangyin City in the Yangtze River Delta, China

Research on the development performance of small towns is critical for promoting their revitalization, advancing urbanization, and high-quality development and transformation for realizing urban–rural integration. We used the DPSIR-DEA model to study the spatiotemporal evolution process and characteristics of the development performance of 14 small towns within the administrative division of Jiangyin city from 2001 to 2019. We subsequently applied a geographical detector model to analyze the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the factors influencing the development performance of small towns. The results showed that 2012 was a turning point in the overall development performance index of small towns in Jiangyin, revealing initially decreasing and then increasing trends. The development performance index values of different types of small towns evidenced three trends: a steady increase, a continuous decrease, and an initial decrease followed by an increase. During 2001–2019, the development performance of Jiangyin’s small towns reflected a spatial evolution pattern of complete dispersion → small agglomeration → large agglomeration. An optimal spatial pattern comprised an increase in the number of towns demonstrating a high development performance and a decrease in the number of towns with a low development performance. GDP per capita, industrial investments, and construction land density were key influencing factors of development performance, which was mainly driven by economic and social factors, with ecological factors having a relatively weak influence.