Evaluation of China's marine economic efficiency under environmental constraints—an empirical analysis of China's eleven coastal regions

Abstract Along with the rapid growth of the coastal economy as well as the broadening and deepening of ocean exploration, the extensive growth pattern of China's marine economy led to such problems as more consumption of marine resources, more waste emissions, and the deterioration of the marine ecological system. Therefore, the study of marine economic efficiency has great significance for achieving cleaner production and sustainable development of China's marine economy. Based on the global Malmquist-Luenberger index model, this paper brings undesirable output into the measurement of total factor productivity to evaluate the green efficiency of China's marine economy under environmental constraints. In order to better depict the dynamic nature of marine economic efficiency, eleven coastal regions in China were selected as the objects of this study, with data collected from 2006 to 2014. The results indicate that total factor productivity of China's marine economy without considering undesirable output is markedly higher than that considering it. China's coastal regions differed in the green efficiency of the marine economy. The green efficiency of the marine economy in Tianjin rose the fastest, while in Guangxi it dropped the fastest, and the average annual growth rate varied by 8.18% between the two provinces. Moreover, the green efficiency of the East China Sea Economic Circle is the highest in the three coastal regions followed by the Bohai Economic Rim, while that of the South China Sea Economic Circle is the lowest. The improvement of the green efficiency of China's marine economy mainly stems from technological progress, while the improvement of technical efficiency has little influence on it, sometimes even adversely affecting it. Based on these findings, we discuss the corresponding policy suggestions on the sustainable development of China's marine economy.