Measuring Chinese Marine Environmental Efficiency: A Spatiotemporal Pattern Analysis

Environmental efficiency standards are often used to evaluate the costs of oceanic economic development. A variety of statistical analyses were applied in this study to quantify the marine environmental efficiency of 11 Chinese coastal provinces and municipalities between 2000 and 2014. Results initially reveal that environmental efficiency measures that incorporate undesirable outputs are more consistent with real production conditions and thus the use of marine economic and environmental efficiencies supplement and complement one another. Second, overall marine environmental efficiency across China tends to be low and can be spatially characterized by a transformation such that the inefficiencies noted in 2000 have subsequently been transformed to comprise a three-tiered structure that encompasses northern, central, and southern cores. Third, variation in absolute and relative marine environmental efficiency differences for the coastal regions of China have been consistent over time; values initially decreased before increasing again in a fluctuating manner over the time period of this analysis. Fourth, data show that the Pearl River Delta area has experienced the highest rate of change in marine environmental efficiency over time when economic zones are used as basic research units, although values have nevertheless fluctuated significantly. Fifth, values for total factor productivity as well as technical efficiency and change across the Chinese marine economy all fluctuated over time but increased. Data show that changes in marine environmental efficiency across China can primarily be attributed to progress in marine science and technology. Finally, levels of capital investment and marine industrial pollution intensity are not significantly correlated with marine environmental efficiency. Indeed, both marine industrial structural levels and environmental protection technologies have had a positive effect on environmental efficiency while levels of investment in marine scientific research as well as the scale of economic development, the marine economy, and the degree of external openness have all exerted negative effects on this key variable.