Ziyuan Kexue (Feb 2023)
Spatiotemporal evolution and improvement pathway of ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use in China under technological heterogeneity
Abstract
[Objective] The objective of this research was to reveal the driving force of the growth of ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use, explore the pathway of improvement of ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use, and provide policy references for promoting the green transformation of cultivated land use. [Methods] By combining the Meta-frontier analytical framework with the Non-radial Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index, the Meta-frontier Non-radial Malmquist-Luenberger (MNML) productivity index model was constructed, thus effectively solving the problem of how to evaluate the ecological efficiency and ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use that can take into account undesirable outputs in the framework of technological heterogeneity. [Results] The MNML productivity index was used to evaluate the ecological efficiency and total factor productivity of cultivated land use in China from 1997 to 2019. The study results showed that: (1) Under the meta-frontier, the mean value of cultivated land use ecological efficiency in China was 0.350, and there was still 65.0% room for improvement; Except for the eastern region, the ecological efficiency values of cultivated land use under the group-frontier in the central and western regions were much higher than that under the meta-frontier. (2) The annual average growth rate of ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use in China was 4.0%, which was mainly driven by technological progress of cultivated land use, while technical efficiency of cultivated land use hindered the growth of ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use. (3) The distribution of ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use in China was characterized by high levels in the eastern and western regions and low levels in the central region, and the growth patterns of ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use in the eastern, central, and western China were different. [Conclusion] When measuring the ecological efficiency or total factor productivity of cultivated land use, it was necessary to divide the decision-making units with the characteristics of technological heterogeneity into groups with the same or similar technological level according to a certain standard, so as to meet the requirements of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model for the technological homogeneity of decision-making units within the same group. The production technology in the eastern region represented the national potential optimal production technology, while there was still a big gap between the production technology in the central and western regions and the national potential optimal production technology. There was a clear spatial heterogeneity in both the ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use and its decomposition index in China. So differentiated pathways to improve the ecological total factor productivity of cultivated land use should be constructed, and policies related to high quality cultivated land use should be formulated based on regional technological heterogeneity.
Keywords
