Impact of Effective Irrigation on County-level Agricultural Economic Growth in Hebei Province Calculated Using Spatial Measurement and Threshold Regression

Abstract

【Background and objective】 Hebei province is the second largest agricultural province in terms of agricultural counties. Improving county-level agricultural economy is hence important for developing the provincial economy. This, however, is held back by scarcity and uneven distribution of its water resources. Effective irrigation has been proposed as a solution to this dilemma, but it is unknown if this could slow down the economic growth as suspected over the past few years. The objective of this paper is to elucidate the impact of effective irrigation on agricultural economy at country level. 【Method】 The analysis is based on data collected from 2015 to 2017 from 170 districts and counties across the province. The Moran’s I index and the Getis-Ord Gi* indexes are used to calculate the spatial correlation and clarify the spatiotemporal evolution of the agricultural economy in these counties/districts. Spatial autoregressive and panel threshold regression models are used to analyze the effect of effective irrigation on agricultural economy. 【Result】 Agricultural economy is uneven between these counties, but its spatial distribution pattern remains stable, all showing a continuous improvement. SDM model shows that the counties/districts which had implemented effective irrigation not only inhibited their own agricultural economy but also their adjacent neighbour. Panel threshold regression model shows that with the two thresholds taken as the demarcation point, the effective irrigation had a three-stage impact on agricultural economic growth: noticeably inhibited, continuously inhibited, and noticeably increased. There are 166 districts/counties which are in the middle transfer range, at which an increase in effective irrigation had a continuous inhibitory effect on their agricultural economy. The deficiencies of natural resources make it difficult to develop and utilize water resources, and natural disasters often affect irrigation benefits. The investment in irrigation facilities is large and most counties are still in recovering the construction costs. These are the main reasons behind the slowed agricultural economic growth in most of these counties. While constructing water conservancy engineering facilities is essential to improving water resource utilization, other methods such as developing water-saving irrigation technologies, improving management and agricultural policies is also helpful to improve quality and efficiency of agricultural production. 【Conclusion】 The analysis shows that implementation of effective irrigations by some counties in Hebei province has a negative impact on their agricultural economy, and the underlying reasons vary.

Keywords

• hebei
• effective irrigation
• county-level agricultural economy
• spatial econometrics
• double threshold effect