A Study On The Efficiency Of Environmental Protection Investment Along The Belt And Road

How to scientifically evaluate the efficiency of regional environmental protection investment with consideration of regional differences is a question of in-depth research,and it is also a reflection of the importance of promoting the role of investment efficiency in promoting regional pollution control.This thesis focuses on the environmental protection efficiency of the areas along“The Belt and Road” in China,which has practical significance for helping the healthy development of environmental protection causes along the line.Based on government statistics,the research content is as follows:First,the relative scale and absolute scale of environmental protection investment are studied from the overall scale.Then,the principal component construction method,three-stage DEA model,and spatial aggregation model are used to analyze the environmental protection input efficiency of wastewater,waste gas,and solid waste treatment in 18 provinces along “The Belt and Road” in China.At the same time,considering regional differences such as the regional economic environment,urbanization level,secondary industry development level,and random factors,the comprehensive efficiency,scale efficiency,pure technological efficiency,and spatial agglomeration effects of environmental protection inputs were measured.The results show that constructing an indicator system from the perspective of "cost theory" solves the problem of unintended output indicators.The principal component weighting method makes the evaluation index system meet the "the rule of thumb" of the model.In terms of overall scale,insufficient investment in total environmental protection is still the main reason that restricts the development of environmental protection under “The Belt and Road” region,and the growth momentum of environmental protection investment is insufficient,far behind the national average.Specifically,in terms of wastewater treatment,the low overall efficiency of Liaoning,Jilin,Heilongjiang,Chongqing,and Gansu along the “Belt and Road” is mainly due to the low efficiency of pure technology.Except for Liaoning,the return on scale of investment is generally increasing.From the perspective of the exhaust gas treatment efficiency distribution map,many provinces with low efficiency have low overall efficiency due to low scale efficiency,such as Qinghai,Liaoning,Jilin,etc.Among them,the pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency of Gansu are far below the average level.The external environment of most provinces is at a disadvantage.In terms of solid waste treatment,pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency are“double bottoms”,and there are large spatial differences in comprehensive efficiency.Except for Guangxi,Fujian,and Zhejiang,scale returns are generally increasing.The results of spatial aggregation research show that the "high-high" aggregation type of the "three wastes" environmental protection input efficiency is not significant.Some provinces present "low-low" and "bottom-high" aggregation types with 95% confidence.The innovation points of the thesis are as follows: First,in the study of the environmental protection input efficiency of waste water and waste gas,the theory of "cost theory" is used as a reference,and the undesired output variable is regarded as an input variable to set the index system.This is different from the previous setting of the index system from the perspective of "investment theory".The previous "investment theory" perspective study ignored the impact of unintended output.Secondly,in terms of model selection,this paper mainly adopts the three-stage DEA model,which effectively solves the shortcomings of the one-stage DEA model that ignores the influence of external factors.It is more applicable to cross-regional province research scenarios.Thirdly,in terms of research methods,this paper combines principal component construction method,three-stage DEA model,and spatial aggregation model to form a complete set of methods for analyzing regional environmental investment efficiency.The principal component weighting method makes the input-output variables of the three-stage DEA model follow the thumb rule,and uses the pure technical efficiency values of the provinces measured by the three-stage DEA model to show the space spillover effect of efficiency through the space aggregation model.This overcomes the limitation of comparing only the spatial quantile differences of efficiency values,and expands the applicability of the three-stage DEA model.