Does Agricultural Mechanization Improve Agriculture Environment Efficiency?-Evidence from China’s Planting Industry

Abstract It has important theoretical value and practical significance to study the impact of agricultural mechanization (AM) on agriculture environment efficiency (AEE), as AM is an important way to improve the level of rural modernization and accelerate the high-quality development of agriculture, while the increase of energy consumption of AM has brought greenhouse gas emissions. Using the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2001 to 2019, this article adopts stochastic frontier analysis method with output oriented distance function to measure AEE based on net carbon sink, and empirically analyzes the impact of AM on AEE. The empirical analysis finds that the AEE of the whole country and all provinces shows an upward trend with time, and has significant spatial positive autocorrelation characteristics. There is a Kuznets inverted "U" relationship between AM and AEE. Meanwhile, AM has spatial spillover effect and time cumulative effect on AEE, and this basic conclusion is still robust after using instrumental variables, spatial autoregressive model, sub sample regression, changing spatial weight matrix and independent. Further research shows that the effect of AM on AEE depends on the input effect and output effect caused by AM, and the mechanism is mainly reflected in agricultural technology progress, expansion of the scale of agricultural operation, optimization of resource allocation and spatial spillover. Given these findings, the paper adds considerable value to the empirical literature and also provides various policy- and practical implications.