Forested Land Use Efficiency in China: Spatiotemporal Patterns and Influencing Factors from 1999 to 2010

More attention needs to be paid to efficiency in the use of forested land. This article is devoted to the study of forested land use efficiency (FLUE) and its spatiotemporal differences in China during the period from 1999 to 2010. The global generalized directional distance function (GGDDF) and global Malmquist–Luenberger (GML) index models are used to measure and analyze forested land use efficiency. The empirical results showed that forested land use efficiency continued to increase during the study period. The FLUE of Shanghai was always highest, whereas Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Qinghai suffered the most inefficiency in forested land use. There were obvious spatial differences in forested land use efficiency among the 31 provinces. Urbanization, economic development context, and population density were the main factors influencing spatial differences in forested land use efficiency. The growth in the non-radial Malmquist forested land performance index (NMPFI) in the east was driven mainly by technological change, whereas the growth in the central region was mostly derived from progress in efficiency change. For the western region, the change in the productivity of forested land was the result of the interactive effect between technological change and effect change, and only in the western region did an absolute β-convergence exist