An Empirical Study on the Impact of Local Financial Capacity on the Supply Efficiency of Ecological Public Goods

Improving the quality and level of ecological public goods supply is crucial for enhancing the public happiness index and ensuring ecological welfare. A high-quality ecological environment generates significant positive externalities, making the provision of such goods a key focus of government expenditure. The ability of local governments to adequately fund the supply of ecological public goods depends on the strength of their financial capacity. Based on the panel data of 30 provincial-level regions in China from 2007 to 2019, this paper uses the super-efficiency Slack-Based Measure (SBM) model and the dynamic Malmquist index to measure the supply efficiency of provincial-level regional ecological public goods including undesirable outputs. Furthermore, the panel Tobit model and the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model are used to empirically test the impact of local fiscal capacity on the supply efficiency of ecological public goods. The results show that fiscal absorption capacity can significantly improve the supply efficiency of ecological public goods, and the economic growth preference of fiscal allocation capacity can also significantly improve the supply efficiency of ecological public goods, indicating that under the influence of the current economic structure transformation and ecological civilization construction, the distortion of local governments in the supply of public goods has been improved, while the administrative consumption preference of fiscal allocation capacity hinders the improvement of the supply efficiency of ecological public goods, and the fiscal self-sufficiency has a lag in improving the supply efficiency of ecological public goods. Fiscal transfer payments have significantly improved the efficiency of the supply of ecological public goods.