Meteorological drought serves as a precursor to the occurrence of hydrological drought, so exploring the main factors influencing the propagation of meteorological drought to hydrological drought is of vital significance to the establishment of an effective monitoring and early warning system for hydrological drought based on meteorological drought. In the case of the Fuhe River Basin(hereinafter referred to as FRB), the evaluation of meteorological drought and hydrological drought was conducted respectively using the standardized precipitation index and the standardized runoff index. To quantify the impact of climate change and human activities on the propagation of drought, a drought propagation assessment method was developed. This method employed a distributed binary water cycle model, namely WEP-L model, and incorporated a multi-factor integrated impact contribution volume decomposition approach. Through this framework, the contributions of climate change and human activities to the changes in drought propagation could be accurately measured. The findings indicate that a distributed binary water cycle model was successfully constructed for the FRB. The Nash efficiency coefficients of the simulated flow at the basin outlet section were all above 0.85, and the relative errors were all within 5%. The analysis revealed a shift in the relationship between meteorological drought and hydrological drought propagation during the period from the 1980s to the 1990s. Comparing the period from 1991 to 2019 with the reference period of 1956 to 1990, the propagation rate decreased by 8.3%. The dominant factor mitigating the propagation of meteorological drought to hydrological drought was climate change, contributing -9.9%; whereas human activities had a exacerbating effect, contributing 1.6%. Notably, precipitation, as the primary driver of drought, increased by 144.3 mm during the study period, playing a significant role in reducing the sensitivity of meteorological drought to hydrological drought propagation.