Coupling and Coordination Relationship between Economic and Ecologic-Environmental Developments in China’s Key State-Owned Forest Areas

China’s key state-owned forest areas are important ecological conservation areas and its forest management belongs to several forest industry groups. Therefore, the ecological improvement and economic development of the key state-owned forest areas should be balanced. This study developed an integrated evaluation model of coupling and coordination, by employing the data of the key forest areas from 2001 to 2019, to investigate the coupling and coordination relationship between the efficiency of economic development and the level of ecological development, using the DEA model. The results suggest that the indices of ecological development in the key state-owned forest areas increased from 2001 to 2019, and especially in 2015, to a better status, due to the policy of completely stopping logging. The other finding was that the coupling degree between the efficiency of economic development and the level of ecological development was in an antagonistic stage, which showed a slow upward trend of the coupling degree and coupling coordination degree and then evolved to a medium and high coordination coupling situation. The reason was that, with the implementation of the ecological protection policy and the industrial transformation of the forest industry group, the ecological environment improved and the development of enterprises was further optimized. Moreover, this study further identified the main factors that affect the coupling and coordination degree of the key state-owned forest areas, including the proportion of tertiary industry, economic growth rate, forest park area, and investment in wildlife and plant protection and natural resource conservation areas. The factors were divided into three principal components. The most significant impact on the economic and ecological coupling coordination of the key state-owned forest areas was the first principal component, meaning that ecological improvement was the most important factor. The second principal component was mainly social coupling coordination, while the third principal component had little effect on economic and ecological coupling coordination