Analysis on the Agricultural Green Production Efficiency and Driving Factors of Urban Agglomerations in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River

Lei Wang, Zengrui Qi, Qinghua Pang, Yibo Xiang and Yanli Sun
Additional contact information
Lei Wang: School of Business, Hohai University, Changzhou 213022, China
Zengrui Qi: School of Business, Hohai University, Changzhou 213022, China
Qinghua Pang: School of Business, Hohai University, Changzhou 213022, China
Yibo Xiang: Department of Economics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
Yanli Sun: College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: As one of the main grain-producing areas in China, urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River plays an important role in the development of agricultural production for China’s grain supply. The existing studies about agricultural production efficiency lack of regional coordination analysis at both macro and micro levels, and only few studies consider the impact of agricultural production environment pollution and other undesirable outputs. Based on the input–output index system of agricultural green production, Slacks-based model (SBM) was adopted to measure the agricultural green production efficiency of 31 prefecture level cities in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River from 2008 to 2018, and the Tobit model of panel fixed effect was used to analyze the driving effect of external factors that affect the agricultural green production efficiency of urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. At the same time, the research methods at both macro and micro levels provide ideas for the research of transregional production efficiency. The results showed that: (1) the agricultural green production efficiency of urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze river is relatively low, with 2009 and 2013 as the inflection points, showing a stable trend of rise and decline; (2) The green agricultural production efficiency of urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River presents the spatial distribution characteristics of “high in the west and low in the east”. The regional efficiency difference is obvious, the gap gradually expands, develops from the equilibrium to the polarization; (3) Urbanization development and government intervention has a significant restraining effect on the improvement of agricultural green production efficiency, and opening to the outside world produces a remarkable influence on the improvement of agricultural green production efficiency, however, economic development and industrial structure have little impact on the improvement of agricultural green production efficiency. Therefore, it is necessary to increase investment in technological innovation, promote agricultural transformation and upgrading, promote rational factors allocation and promote coordinated development of agriculture based on regional production differences.

Keywords: urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River; agricultural green production efficiency; driving factors; undesirable output Slacks-based model; tobit model of panel fixed effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/97/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/97/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2020:i:1:p:97-:d:467612

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().