Does Free Trade Zone Promote the Regional Ecological Efficiency?

Abstract

The construction of ecological civilization is of great importance. On the basis of the provincial panel data from 2003 to 2017, this paper studies the impact of FTZs on ecological efficiency. The results show that FTZs have improved regional ecological efficiency, but the effects are only reflected in inland provinces and there are significant lag effect. That is, the scale of FTZs in the current period will effectively promote the ecological efficiency of inland provinces in the later periods, and it has the greatest promotion effect in the second period. Research and development capital investment has a beneficial effect on the improvement of the ecological efficiency of the province, while external dependence of foreign trade has an inhibitory effect on the development of the ecological efficiency of the province