Ecological governance is significant to the high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin. Based on the panel data from 2004 to 2019, this research analyzes the ecological governance performance at provinciallevel alongside the Yellow River through applying Malmquist-Luenberger index model. It shows not optimistic enough overall. In detail, the worst year is 2007 and the best is 2016. Regional differences are significant, among which Shandong and Henan are relatively better. After analyzing influencing factors of performance through spatial econometric regression model, the results show some uncommon points. First, as far as the economic factors are concerned，the poor performance of ecological governance is ascribed to governance waste and incongruousregional development, but not the common-sense pollution brought by regional development. Second, the areas with water shortages perform better than those with rich water resource. Third, urbanization has a complex impact on ecological governance performance. However, it presents relatively positive effects on the whole. Fourth, technological innovation and education shows positive influence ingeneral.