Financial resources utilization efficiency in sports infrastructure development, determinant of total factor productivity growth and regional production technology heterogeneity in China

Despite China's heavy investment in sports infrastructure development in the last decades, the financial resources utilization efficiency (FRUE), regional technological gap (TGR), and total factor productivity change (TFPC) in sports infrastructure development are undiscovered and worth investigating. To this end, this study employed DEA-SBM, Meta-frontier analysis, and Malmquist productivity index on the data set of 31 Chinese provinces and 3 regions for the years 2014-2021 to gauge the FRUE, TGR, and TFPC in sports infrastructure development. The results indicate that the average FRUE is 0.4859, with a growth potential of 51.41% in financial resource utilization efficiency for sports infrastructure development. Further Eastern region is more efficient as compared to the Central and western regions. Beijing, Shanghai, Tibet, Hainan, and Guangdong are top performers in FRUE. Further, the value of TGR in the East is 0.9787 which is higher than in Central (0.4977), and Western (0.5821) regions. It indicates that the eastern region contains superior production technology in the development of the sports infrastructure in China. Moreover, the average TFPC value is 1.035 witnessed a 3.5% growth, primarily determined by technological change (TC). As TC = 1.0273 is higher than efficiency change EC = 0.997. The eastern region has a higher average TFPC of 1.048, indicating higher total factor productivity growth in sports infrastructure development. Beijing, Liaoning, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Zhejiang are the top performers in the TFP growth over the study period. Finally, the Kruskal-Wallis test proved the statistically significant difference in three regions of China for FRUE, TGR, and TFPC in sports infrastructure development.