Identifying factors influencing the forestry production efficiency in Northwest China

Abstract

Forestry industry has realized a rapid development in China due to the domestic and international demand for forestry products. Considering the conservation of forest ecology, China has strived to improve the forestry production efficiency. Currently, the northwestern regions have been trying to recover the ecology and make economic growth through forestry development. This research has assessed the forestry production efficiency in the six provinces in Northwest China. The stochastic frontier analysis was used to calculate the production efficiency. To conduct a spatiotemporal analysis, we measured the regional differences in forestry productivity and used global spatial autocorrelation to measure the spatial correlation degree. The regression model uncovered how the six factors influenced the forestry production efficiency in Northwest China. Our results show that from 2005 to 2015 the forestry production efficiency of the six provinces was declining. The spatial differences of the forestry production efficiency among the six provinces were gradually decreasing. Regarding the influencing factors, we found that the per capita GDP, forest coverage rate, the educational level of forestry employees and the number of township forestry technology stations had positive correlation with the production efficiency. The collective forest tenure reform had a negative effect, which hindered the efficiency at the regional level in Northwest China. In the future, efforts should be made to enhance the infrastructure investment, the education of forestry practitioners and the application of the advanced technology.