Driving forces on the development of China's marine economy: Efficiency and spatial perspective

The Marine economy serves as the blue engine for national economic growth in China. The improvement of the marine economy's total factor productivity is of great significance for achieving high-quality development. This paper measures the marine economic efficiency of 11 coastal areas in China from 2007 to 2017 with the EBM (Epsilon-based measure) model in DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) and explores its temporal and spatial evolutionary trends. On this basis, The spatial Dubin model (SDM) is constructed to explore the influencing factors and mechanisms to marine economic efficiency. The results show that: (1) Marine economic efficiency in China's coastal areas presents obvious characteristics of phase changes, which is dominated by the scale effect. (2) There is significant spatial heterogeneity in the efficiency of the marine economy in the northern, eastern, and southern marine economic zones. (3) Economic development level, economic growth expectations, and the degree of openness have a significant positive impact on the marine economic efficiency; the optimization of the marine industry structure that solely emphasizes the share of tertiary industry has a negative inhibitory effect on the efficiency of the marine economy; marine R&D investment has not yet produced an impact on economic efficiency. Finally, this paper proposes suggestions on policy-making based on relevant research conclusions. China should pursue high-quality development of the marine economy over high-speed growth. It is suggested that coastal regions should strengthen inter-regional cooperation to promote industrial clustering and give full play to the central driving role of innovation in marine economic development.