Spatial-temporal differentiation characteristics of the efficiency of green transformation of cultivated land use and its affecting factors in China

Abstract: Sustainable (Green) development has been ever deepening the comprehensive transformation of the social economy at present. The green transformation of cultivated land use (GTCLU) has been one of the key steps towards the modern agriculture. The GTCLU has also been an effective solution to the ecological dilemma of cultivated land use, particularly on a positive response to national development strategies, such as green China and economic transformation. However, such a research is still lacking. In this study, an attempt was made to elucidate the concept of GTCLU, thereby to guide the subsequent activities of cultivated land use for the better improvement of green development. Moreover, the characteristics of GTCLU were also summarized from four aspects: the category of transformation, the causes of transformation, the manifestations of GTCLU, and the evolution form of GTCLU. A green evolution of cultivated land system was then proposed from the perspective of micro production factors, indicating a better starting point for the efficiency of GTCLU in China. As such, the index system of GTCLU was constructed scientifically. Thus, the panel data was collected from the 30 provinces in China from 2003 to 2017. A three-stage DEA-Malmquist and Tobit models were also utilized to calculate the efficiency and affecting factors of GTCLU. The results showed that: 1) The initial result of efficiency of GTCLU from the Malmquist model presented a V-shaped trend of “declining first, then increasing”. Specifically, the efficiency value was less than 1, indicating the green transition was invalid in most years. 2) The SFA regression was selected to remove the influence of environmental factors and random errors. After that, the efficiency value of GTCLU was 1.001, indicating an outstanding GTCLU degree. More importantly, the technological progress was greatly contributed to the efficiency improvement. Specifically, the change of technical efficiency, pure technical, and scale efficiency were the main bottlenecks for the efficiency improvement. 3) There were also the outstanding regional differences in the efficiency of GTCLU in China. The central region presented the best relative efficiency, followed by the northeast and eastern regions, and the western region was relatively the lowest. Meanwhile, there was a fluctuating upward trend in the time series, with an average annual growth rate of 0.84%. 4) The GTCLU efficiency was significantly depended on the agricultural economic level, cultivated land resource endowment, government support, and technology use intensity. A better GTCLU was then required the system, management innovation, as well as the promotion of resource endowment and technology. Specifically, four suggestions were addressed for each region during this time: 1) To take the sustainable development of cultivated land resource endowment; 2) To strictly control the low benefit mode of agricultural economic development; 3) To fully release the vitality of green cultivated land market and the driving force; 4) To continuously strengthen the green elements in the input and output of cultivated land use.