CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1523452
Evaluation of Agricultural Product Distribution Efficiency under the Perspective of Agricultural-Commerce Integration
Provisionally accepted
- 1Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China
- 2Minjiang University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
- 3Fujian Business University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This study evaluates the efficiency of agricultural product distribution through the lens of agricultural-commerce integration, focusing on Fujian Province, China. By innovatively dividing the distribution process into two stages-production and sales-and employing a non-radial Slack-Based Measure (SBM) two-stage network Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, the research provides a more comprehensive assessment of distribution efficiency. The results reveal that Xiamen maintained full efficiency in both stages, while Fuzhou improved from 0.681 in 2015 to full production efficiency by 2019. In contrast, Nanping's sales efficiency remained as low as 0.041. The results show that while overall distribution efficiency has improved, significant regional disparities persist, particularly in the sales stage. The paper highlights the central role of agricultural product distribution companies in optimizing resource allocation and enhancing efficiency through collaborations with emerging agricultural entities and strategies to reduce distribution costs. Additionally, the study introduces a novel approach by categorizing cities based on their efficiency levels and proposing tailored improvement strategies for each category.High-performing cities like Xiamen and Fuzhou should focus on value-added processing, while low-efficiency cities like Nanping require targeted interventions to improve sales performance. This research contributes to the literature by integrating agricultural-commerce integration into the evaluation of distribution efficiency and offers actionable insights for policymakers and stakeholders in the agricultural sector looking to improve agricultural product distribution systems.
Keywords: Agricultural product distribution, Agricultural-commerce integration, Efficiency evaluation, Stage Data Envelopment Analysis, Fujian
Received: 06 Nov 2024; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tang, Zheng and Su. 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:
Qiujin Zheng, Minjiang University, Fuzhou, 350108, Fujian Province, China
Xiaofeng Su, Fujian Business University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.