Research On The Efficiency Of Financial Environmental Protection Expenditure Of Prefecture-level Cities In Hubei Province

Nowadays,with the economic development entering the new normal,environmental protection has also entered a new stage.As public goods,environmental protection has a significant external effect.Therefore,the local government should be the main supplier of environmental protection.In recent years,with the rapid economic development and industrial structure transformation and upgrading of Hubei Province,the original extensive economic development has brought many environmental problems.With the waste of resources and the destruction of ecological environment,people in Hubei Province call for the construction of "beautiful Hubei".However,with the increasingly severe environmental forms,the proportion of government environmental protection funds in fiscal expenditure and GDP is relatively low,so the efficiency of fiscal environmental protection expenditure is particularly critical.This not only determines the effect of environmental protection,but also reflects the level of environmental governance of the government.In recent years,the scale of environmental protection fund expenditure in Hubei Province is expanding.But for Hubei Province,this did not make the environmental situation of Hubei Province significantly improved.Therefore,it can be concluded that the fiscal expenditure efficiency of environmental protection in Hubei Province has not reached the ideal level.Therefore,after correctly evaluating the efficiency of Hubei Province’s financial expenditure on environmental protection,this paper puts forward targeted suggestions to improve the environmental governance in Hubei Province.On the basis of externality theory,public finance theory and financial expenditure efficiency theory,this paper carefully analyzes the current situation of environmental protection expenditure in Hubei Province and other cities.Then,according to the panel data of 12 prefecture level cities in Hubei Province from 2011 to 2017,using DEA model,the static efficiency and dynamic efficiency of government expenditure on environmental protection are calculated,and the results of static efficiency and dynamic efficiency are further analyzed by using GIS technology.The results show that the overall level of fiscal environmental protection expenditure efficiency in Hubei Province is relatively low,and the differences between different cities are relatively obvious,and most cities are in the stage of diminishing returns to scale.In the past seven years,the efficiency of environmental financial expenditure in Hubei Province has declined,and the decrease of technological progress is the main reason for the decrease of the efficiency of environmental financial expenditure in relevant prefecture level cities.Then we use Tobit regression to analyze the influencing factors.The results show that population density,education level and the level of opening to the outside world have an impact on the efficiency of fiscal expenditure on environmental protection,while the per capita GDP and industrial structure have not passed the significance test.Finally,according to the results of empirical analysis,in order to improve the efficiency of fiscal environmental protection expenditure in Hubei Province,this paper puts forward targeted policy recommendations for the problems exposed in the empirical analysis.