Spatio-Temporal Differences in Relative Efficiency of Water Resource Utilization in Liaoning Province
Liaoning Province has one of the most serious water shortages in northern China, with high seasonal and regional variation in water distribution. The demand on water resources is increasing due to industrialization, urbanization and socioeconomic development, causing increasing disparities between levels of water supply and demand. Water shortage has become a major constraint on economic development, and the effective solution is to increase the efficiency of water utilization. However, existing research on water utilization efficiency relies on qualitative analysis, with limited use of quantitative methods. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), used to analyze efficiency and productivity based on input-output production functions, provides a quantitative assessment of the relative efficiency of water utilization. In this paper, DEA was used to estimate water utilization relative efficiency in Liaoning. Using data from 1999 to 2005 for fourteen cities in Liaoning, we selected domestic water usage, productive water usage, labor, fixed asset investment, and land as the inputs, and chose gross domestic product as the output. The DEA method was applied to calculate the scale redundancy ratio and technical redundancy ratio. On this basis, the water utilization relative efficiency was calculated for each city. We also discuss the spatial-temporal variation of water distribution. The scale and technical redundancy ratios of domestic water utilization among different cities were compared as well as those of productive water utilization. The spatial analysis shows that domestic water utilization efficiency, productive water utilization efficiency and total water utilization relative efficiency are distinctly different among the fourteen cities. The overall trend shows an increase in the province's relative efficiency from 1999 to 2005, although the efficiency decreases in 2003. The trend and one-year decline were analyzed by considering relevant influencing factors. The analysis of spatial-temporal variation may provide background information for improved utilization of water resources. Further research on the relationship between water utilization relative efficiency and economic development reveals some important conclusions: the relationship of the water utilization scale redundancy ratio and per-capita GDP fit the environmental Kuznets curve, which is an inverted U-shape curve, and the water utilization technical redundancy ratio is negatively correlated with the level of economic development. These conclusions may provide a theoretical foundation for the design of water policies.
Liaoning ProvinceWater resource utilizationRelative efficiencyData envelopment analysisSpatial and temporal difference
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
