Long-term differentiation in ecological resilience within ecologically livable villages remains insufficiently understood under rapid urbanization and persistent land-use change. Using a regionalscale sample of 1,090 ecologically livable villages in the Yangtze River Delta, this study constructed an ecological resilience index (ERI) and its three dimensions ‒ resistance, adaptability, and recovery ‒ and identified spatial patterns and temporal trends in 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, and 2023. The 1,090-village sample was used as the main regional-scale sample to identify long-term ERI patterns and regional background explanatory variables, whereas the 107-village corridor sample was introduced as a supplementary mechanism sample to examine local spatial configuration factors under a relatively similar Yangtze corridor context. We then applied XGBoost-SHAP to characterize variable importance, SHAP contribution directions, and nonlinear response ranges in the regional-scale and corridor-level analyses. ERI remained broadly stable from 2003 to 2023, but spatial differentiation persisted. Runoff, cropland proportion, and precipitation were the dominant explanatory variables associated with ERI in 2023. In the corridor sample, road density, POI density, and road length showed higher explanatory power than other local mechanism variables. These findings show that persistent differentiation was jointly associated with long-term regional patterns, regional background conditions, and local environmental and spatial configuration factors, and they provide an empirical basis for environmental assessment, spatial configuration optimization, and differentiated management in ecologically livable villages.