Intensity of China’s Agricultural Environmental Regulation and Progress of Production Technology

The increasingly serious agricultural pollution in China poses the question of whether the Chinese government can adopt environmental protection policies to achieve a “win-win” situation of promoting the progress of agricultural production technology and environmental regulation. This research adopts data envelopment analysis method to measure the progress index of production technology of 31 provinces in China to evaluate the effects of environmental regulations on the progress of agricultural production technology. Panel data method is also used to conduct an empirical test to explore the relationship of the intensity of agricultural environmental regulation, human capital, industrial structure, income level, and related technical factors with the progress of production technology. Results indicate that an increase in the intensity of environmental regulations causes first a decrease in the level of agricultural production technology in the central and eastern regions of China, which then gradually increases, thereby indicating a significant “U” curve trajectory and high statistical significance. By contrast, the western region did not form a statistically significant U-type relationship. In the process of promoting agricultural environmental protection policy, the Chinese government should devote more efforts to strengthening agricultural environmental protection and should attach greater importance to the methods and implementation of agricultural environmental regulations.