THREE-STAGE SLACK-BASED MEASURE-DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS ON AGRICULTURAL ECOLOGICAL EFFICIENCY OF THE YELLOW RIVER BASIN

Agricultural ecological efficiency (AEE) is an important indicator of the sustainable development of agriculture. Based on the Slack-based measure (SBM)-data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with undesirable output, this paper designs a three-stage SBM-DEA model to evaluate the AEE of the Yellow River Basin in recent years. The results show that: (1) External environment and random factors have significant impacts on the AEE in the Yellow River Basin. (2) Overall, the AEE in the basin declined with fluctuations in the study period, leaving a large room for improvement; on the regional level, the AEE was much higher in the downstream and midstream than in upstream. (3) In terms of management efficiency, the management level of the midstream and upstream is not satisfactory, while that in the downstream is relatively high. Based on these findings, several suggestions were provided to promote the AEE in the Yellow River Basin and realise sustainable development of agriculture.