ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Policy and Governance
Analysis of the Spatio-Temporal Evolution of Ecological Compensation Effects in Southwest China Based on Spatial Difference-in-Differences (DID) Methodology
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Economics and Management, College of geography and Environmental Sciences, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, China
- 2Guizhou Institute of Technology School of Economics and Management, Guiyang, China
- 3Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, Guiyang, China
- 4Christian Brothers University, Memphis, United States
- 5Yibin University, Yibin, China
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Ecological compensation policy for agriculture plays an important role in promoting both economic development and ecological environmental governance in Karst regions. However, current research lacks sufficient quantitative evaluations and analyses on governance effects and spatial spillover effects of ecological compensation policy in mountainous agricultural areas. This study employs data of China's Karst regions from 2005 to 2023 and adopts the DID (Difference-in-Differences) method combined with spatial econometric model to construct a Spatial DID identification strategy, conducting empirical analysis on the implementation effects and spatial spillover effects of ecological compensation policy. The results indicate that: Ecology for mountainous agriculture in Karst regions restores effectively. There is gradual demand reduction for compensation value and the degree of reduction has reached 8.20% in the recent decade. Ecological compensation policy for mountainous agriculture in Karst regions makes 7.52% significant growth of ecological compensation value, 13.60% growth of social service value, 11.40% growth of ecological environment value, and 17.40% significant reduction of natural attribute value. The implementation of ecological compensation policy in China's Karst regions has significant inter-provincial negative spatial spillover effects, with merely 0.200 earnings of the overall policy and 53.00% potential earnings offset by spatial spillover. Results in this study provide references for coordinated governance of economic development and environmental protection in Karst regions.
Keywords: DID (difference-in-difference) model, Ecological compensation, Karst regions, Mountainous agriculture, Spatial andtemporal characteristics
Received: 16 Sep 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ding, Wu, Jia, Yang, Li and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Liang Wu
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