How Do Investment Structure and Business Category Affect the Ecological Efficiency of Forest Parks?—A Case Study from Liaoning Province, China

Abstract

Accurately assessing ecological efficiency and illustrating its impact mechanism can facilitate the construction of an environmentally friendly forest park management system. In this study, we took 28 national forest parks in Liaoning from 2008 to 2017 as study objects, constructed an ecological efficiency framework with a stochastic cost function, and analyzed empirically how investment structures affect the efficiency of forest parks and their mechanism. We found that, firstly, the improvement potential of the ecological efficiency of forest parks in Liaoning was 48%. Secondly, there was a large gap in the ecological efficiency among forests, but it was decreasing over time. Thirdly, investment structure had a significant impact on the ecological efficiency of forest parks. The increase in the proportion of private capital decreased the ecological efficiency, with the marginal contribution ratio being 10.6%. Fourthly, the business category played a mediating role between the investment structure and ecological efficiency of forest parks. Investment structures negatively affected ecological efficiency by increasing the proportion of accommodation and amusement. Lastly, there was heterogeneity in how investment structures affected the ecological efficiency of forest parks, with high-class forest parks through accommodation and low-class forest parks through amusement activities.