A Dual-Dimensional Evaluation of Forest Ecological Product Value Realization Mechanisms in China: Entropy-Weighted TOPSIS Analysis of 147 Prefecture-Level Cities

Forest ecological product value realization (FEPVR) seeks to convert forest ecosystem services into identifiable, accountable, compensable, tradable, and financeable value returns through institutional and market arrangements. Existing studies have mainly emphasized aggregate evaluation or conversion efficiency, with less attention to the structural relationship between ecological supply capacity and value-capture capacity. This study develops a dual-dimensional framework of use-value realization (UVR) and exchange-value realization (EVR), and constructs a city-level panel of 147 policy-practice sample cities (prefecture-level and above) in China over 2019–2023. An entropy-weighted composite index and an entropy-weighted TOPSIS model are applied to measure FEPVR mechanism development, structural configurations, and relative closeness to the sample-defined ideal state. The results show that the mean composite score increased from 0.194 in 2019 to 0.337 in 2023, while the coefficient of variation declined from 0.561 to 0.398, indicating overall improvement and narrowing intercity disparities. Global Moran’s I remains positive and significant throughout the study period, indicating significant and positive spatial autocorrelation in FEPVR mechanism development. The UVR–EVR decomposition reveals substantial structural divergence: the HH, HL, LH, and LL configurations include 29, 33, 25, and 60 cities, respectively. TOPSIS results further show that EVR relative closeness increased markedly, whereas UVR relative closeness declined slightly, indicating that institutional and market-based value-capture capacity expanded faster than the ecological supply base. Robustness checks suggest that the rise in EVR is strongly associated with institutional-entry indicators, and should therefore be interpreted as the expansion of value-capture instruments rather than direct evidence of realized market performance or ecological improvement. The findings provide a descriptive evaluation of FEPVR mechanism development in cities with documented policy or practice foundations, and should not be generalized as the average condition of all Chinese cities.