ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Fisheries, Aquaculture and Living Resources
Measurement and Spatiotemporal Evolution Analysis of Green Total Factor Productivity in China’s Mariculture Industry
Provisionally accepted
- 1Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China
- 2INTI International University, Nilai, Malaysia
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Based on panel data from nine coastal provinces in China from 2013 to 2023, this study constructs an evaluation indicator system for the Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) of China's mariculture industry, conducts measurements, analyzes its temporal evolution characteristics, reveals its regional disparities, and assesses its dynamic evolutionary trends. The findings are as follows: (1) From 2013 to 2023, the average GTFP of China's coastal mariculture industry was 0.93, indicating room for further improvement in the level of green development. After 2020, the GTFP began to show a sustained increase, suggesting initial signs of effectiveness in the green transition of the mariculture sector. The growth of GTFP was jointly driven by both green technical change and green technical efficiency change; however, the contribution of technical change exceeded that of efficiency change gains. (2) There are significant provincial disparities in the GTFP of the mariculture industry. The average GTFP values of Liaoning, Hainan, Guangxi, Guangdong, and Shandong exceeded 1. The averages for Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu ranged between 0.8 and 1.0, while Hebei recorded the lowest average of 0.6. Inter-regional differences were identified as the primary source of the overall disparity. (3) In the short term, provinces with low GTFP levels face challenges in overcoming their backward status, while provinces with high levels can easily maintain their leading positions, indicating a phenomenon of polarization. In the long run, the probability of provinces with low and medium GTFP levels transitioning to higher levels increases significantly. The likelihood of a province moving upward is positively correlated with the GTFP levels of its neighboring provinces. The driving effect from adjacent medium-level provinces is the strongest. Proximity to high-level provinces may produce a "double-edged sword" effect. Based on these findings, this paper proposes recommendations to increase investment in core technology research and development, promote regional coordinated development, and implement differentiated performance evaluations.
Keywords: mariculture, Green total factor productivity, Super Slack-Based Measure, GlobalMalmquist–Luenberger, China
Received: 27 Sep 2025; Accepted: 03 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zheng, Yan and Lee. 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: Sining Zheng, sereneman@126.com
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