Abstract: Taking 16 prefectures and cities in Yunnan Province as an example, the spatial pattern evolution and influencing factors of land economic density in Yunnan Province from 2011 to 2020 were explored by using geographical detectors, Theil index, variation coefficient, relative development rate, spatial auto-correlation analysis and hot spot analysis. The results showed that, from 2011 to 2020, the land economic density of Yunnan Province showed a pattern of “high in the middle and low on both sides, high in the south and low in the northˮ, but the difference was narrowing with time. Moran’s I index value decreased first and then increased steadily, and all were positive, indicating that there was a spatial agglomeration of land economic density. The spatial agglomeration characteristics were obvious, and the hot spots were mainly concentrated in the urban agglomeration of central Yunnan. The economic driving factors such as the total retail sales of local consumer goods and per capita GDP had great explanatory power on the land economic density in Yunnan Province, and the explanatory power of any two factors interacting with each other was better than that of a single factor.

Key words: land economic density, spatial pattern, evolution, influencing factors, Yunnan Province