Does Chinese forestry eco-efficiency converge? A three-stage DEA-Malmquist approach

The contradiction between ecological maintenance and economic production is increasingly prominent with the rapid development of forestry. Uncovering the forestry eco-efficiency which integrates ecology, resources and economic production is the premise of mitigating the hazards of strict reliance on heavy inputs and improving the resource utilization efficiency in forestry. This paper applies a three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model combined with the DEA-Malmquist approach to eliminate the interferences of external environment and random errors and reveal the evolution of real forestry eco-efficiency and its decomposition. Besides, it is beneficial to understand the convergence of forestry eco-efficiency for grasping the long-term efficient operation mechanism of ecological production. The empirical results demonstrate that the forestry eco-efficiency progress is closely related to an excellent environment and efficient internal management by comparing the results between stage I and stage III. Different environmental variables have different effects on the slack of different inputs in stage II. Moreover, the convergence analysis proves the existence of absolute convergence and conditional convergence of forestry eco-efficiency in the whole China and six regions; that is, the catch-up effect is observed in backward provinces. Hence, targeted policy suggestions are provided to achieve forestry return to its green essence.