Index System of Evaluation of Rural Eco-Environmental Quality: A Review

—Compared to urban ecosystems, rural eco-environmental conditions have received relatively little attention from experts and scholars. However, evaluating rural eco-environmental quality serves as a crucial component and scientific basis for promoting sustainable ecological development. It facilitates a deeper understanding of the actual state of rural eco-environments, thereby providing scientific support for precise management by administrative departments, holding practical significance for advancing urbanization. This paper summarizes recent research progress in rural eco-environmental quality evaluation, covering aspects such as indicator systems, evaluation methods, and development prospects. It also provides recommendations for constructing an indicator system for rural eco-environmental quality evaluation. From 2001 to August 2025, 556 key articles indexed in SCI and SSCI were systematically reviewed to examine the development of rural eco-environmental quality evaluation methods. The results show that, influenced by domestic policy orientations, most case studies have been concentrated in China and focus primarily on understanding ecological functions, with limited integration of spatiotemporal and multi-dimensional analysis. To address these limitations, this study proposes a rural-oriented eco-environmental quality evaluation framework that adopts a comprehensive weighting strategy combining both objective and subjective methods, and leverages dynamic, spatially explicit indices such as the Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) to meet the demands of precise rural management.