Measurements and influencing factors of the efficiency of environmental-ly-friendly agricultural production in Sichuan Province based on SE-DEA and spatial panel STIRPAT models

Environmentally-friendly agriculture complies with the current urgent need for green agricultural development. However, the existing research into environmentally-friendly agriculture lacks analysis on productivity improvement. Sichuan is a major agricultural province of China. A quantitative analysis on the efficiency of Sichuan's environmentally-friendly agricultural production and its influencing factors may provide a scientific basis for the development of environmentally-friendly agriculture in Sichuan. This will also enrich the knowledge about environmentally-friendly agriculture from the perspective of production efficiency. Based on panel data from 21 regions in Sichuan Province from 2006 to 2016, Super-Efficiency Data Envelopment Analysis (SE-DEA) models were applied to measure the production efficiency of environmentally-friendly agriculture. A theoretical model for the factors influencing the production efficiency of environmentally-friendly agriculture was established and a Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) was used for empirical analysis based on the STIRPAT theoretical model. The results showed that the production efficiency of environmentally-friendly agriculture in Sichuan Province first decreased and then increased between 2006 and 2016. It decreased from 0.708 in 2006 to 0.667 in 2009, then gradually increasing to 0.805 in 2016. The average efficiency of environmentally-friendly agricultural production in Sichuan during these 11 years was 0.705. The overall level was low and significant differences existed in each region. The highest average production efficiency in Ya'an and Aba reached 0.981, while the minimum in Guangyuan was 0.458. Meanwhile, the average production efficiency, in areas such as Luzhou, Mianyang, Leshan, Yibin, Guang'an, Bazhong, Nanchong, Meishan, and Guangyuan, was lower than 0.6, which was caused by the excessive input of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and agricultural films. The agricultural labor and proportion of grain-sown area in the total crop area had significant direct effects on the production efficiency of environmentally-friendly agriculture. The coefficients for these two factors were 0.158 and 0.506, respectively. The population density and proportion of grain-sown area in the total crop area had significant indirect effects on the production efficiency of environmentally-friendly agriculture. The coefficients for these factors were 0.988 and 1.366, respectively. Additionally, the population density in neighboring regions had spillover effects among regions, which created competition for the limited agricultural resources in this region, resulting in negative indirect effects. The changes of planting structures in neighboring regions affected the adjustment of the planting structure in this region, resulting in negative indirect effects. Because that there were not only significant differences in the production efficiency of environmentally-friendly agriculture in each region of Sichuan, but also spatial spillover effects among the regions, the direct effects of regional internal factors and interactive effects of the factors among the regions should be considered during the formulation of environmentally-friendly agricultural development policies in various regions of Sichuan Province.