**4. Case Study**

### *4.1. Data Sources*

Shandong Province has the third largest provincial economy in China, the third highest provincial GDP at 1/11 of total Chinese GDP, and is the second most populous province in China. Shandong Province is therefore, one the most economically developed and economically strong provinces, and is one of the fastest growing. While the overall economic development in Shandong Province is rising, there are still deficiencies in its green economy development. Therefore, this paper analyzes the green economy development in Shandong Province to demonstrate the validity of the proposed methods and provide guidance for future evaluations.

The index data for this study were taken from the National Statistical Yearbooks (2011–2017) [40] and the Shandong Statistical Yearbooks (2011–2017) [41], with some original data being converted using the relevant calculation formulas.
