Agricultural tridimension pollution emission efficiency in China: An evaluation system and influencing factors

Abstract

We innovated traditional one-sided agricultural carbon emission efficiency research, comprehensively explored the agricultural tridimension pollution emission efficiency (ATPEE), constructed an ATPEE evaluation system considering technological heterogeneity characteristics based on the meta-frontier nonradial directional distance function (NDDF) model in a total-factor framework, evaluated the ATPEE in 30 mainland China provinces from 1997 to 2021 for the first time, and empirically studied the factors influencing the ATPEE in China with the Tobit model. The results showed the following: (1) ATPEE improvement potentials of 75.16 % and 50.88 % occur under the meta and group frontiers, respectively. (2) The eastern region represents the potential optimal agricultural tridimension pollution emission technology, while the central and western regions exhibit a large gap with the national potential optimal technology level. (3) The ATPEE loss in the eastern and western regions mainly results from management inefficiency, while that in the central region largely results from technology gap inefficiency. (4) The effects of the industrialization rate, urban–rural income gap, agricultural production structure, financial support for agriculture, natural conditions and effective irrigation rate on the ATPEE in the different regions vary.