4.6 Article

Does Social Trust Stimulate Regional Eco-Efficiency? Evidence From China

Journal

FRONTIERS IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Volume 9, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fenvs.2021.700139

Keywords

eco-efficiency; social trust; super-SBM DEA; global malmquist index; informal institution

Funding

  1. Graduate Scientific Research and Innovation Foundation of Chongqing [CYB20049]
  2. Major Program of National Social Science Foundation of China [19ZDA082]
  3. National Natural Science Foundation of China [71972017, 71802169]
  4. Philosophy and Social Sciences Foundation of Ministry of Education of China [18JHQ079]
  5. Key Project of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission [19SKZDZX11]
  6. Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [2019 CDJSK02XK 11, 2019CDJSK02PT21]

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The study found that all provinces in China are actively improving their ecological efficiency, and social trust plays a significantly positive role in enhancing regional eco-efficiency, especially in regions with poor legal development.
Ecological efficiency is an important part of economic sustainable development. As the transitional economy with weak institution features, the informal institutions have a vital role in China's economic development. Using panel data from 2001 to 2016, this paper estimates eco-efficiency of China's 30 provinces based on Super-SBM DEA with global Malmquist index and investigates the governance role of a typical informal institution, namely social trust, in regional eco-efficiency. Empirical results show the following: 1) From 2001 to 2016, the accumulated changes of regional eco-efficiency are all greater than 1, indicating that all provinces in China are actively changing its development mode to improve eco-efficiency. 2) Social trust plays a significantly positive role in improving regional eco-efficiency. 3) Moreover, this effect is more pronounced in regions with poor legal development. 4) The mechanism tests further show that social trust can improve regional eco-efficiency through promoting regional green innovation and developing regional finance. Our findings shed light on the implications of informal institutions, and in particular on the value of social trust in realizing green economic development in emerging market.

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