Analysis of the Ecological Efficiency of Chinese Provincial Based on the Three-stage DEA Model

Ecological efficiency is an important index measuring and reflecting the sustainable development level of economy, resources and environment in a region. This paper makes an empirical study on the ecological efficiency of 31 provinces in China in 2014 with the three-stage DEA model. The results show that the three indexes, the total investment in environmental governance (Unit: hundred million Yuan), the second industry proportion(%), and per capita automobile ownership (car/ten thousand people) functioning as the external environmental variables have significantly impacted the regional ecological efficiency. Excluding the impact of the external environment and statistical noise, the technical efficiency of regional ecological efficiency has increased from 0.526 to 0.639, and the pure technical efficiency has increased from 0.650 to 0.858, with the scale efficiency decreased from 0.833 to 0.740, accurately reflecting the regional ecological efficiency level. 31 Chinese provinces are classified into four different types according to the pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. Every region shall, according to the characteristics of its efficiency, emphasize differently on improving the management level or expanding the scale of production so as to improve the ecological efficiency.