The relationship between rural finance development and food ecological total factor productivity: Moderating effects of food science and technology progress

Abstract

Achieving increased food production while reducing pollution emissions is an effective way to ensure food security and sustainable development. However, China's increased food production has been accompanied by resource depletion, ecological degradation and environmental pollution. The purpose of our study is to explore effective strategies to enhance food ecological total factor productivity (FETFP) in China. We considered the ecological value of food cultivation and used Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index method to measure the FETFP. Besides, the entropy weight TOPSIS method is utilized to calculate the composite index of rural finance development. This study improves the precision of the measurement of rural financial development and FETFP variables. We innovatively examined the relationship between rural financial development and FETFP using Tobit model. And we used hierarchical regression analysis to test the moderating role of food science and technology progress in it. The results are as follows. (i)China's ecological value of food cultivation per hectare by region shows an upward trend. Rural finance development and FETFP tend to fluctuate upward in each region of China and the rate of increase is faster in the major food-producing regions (MFPR). (ii)Rural finance development does contribute to the improvement of FETFP. Interestingly, rural finance development in non food-producing regions (NFPR) has a greater impact on FETFP than in MFPR. (iii)Food science and technology progress moderates the relationship between rural finance development and FETFP. The regression results of group regulation show that food science and technology progress can play a stronger positive moderating role in lower FETFP provinces rather than higher FETFP provinces. This study is both a further exploration of total factor productivity improvement in food ecology and an extension of the research area of rural finance development planning.