Balancing economic revenue and grazing pressure of livestock grazing on the Qinghai–Tibetan–Plateau

Abstract

Treating grazing pressure as an undesirable output of livestock grazing in a directional distance function improves understanding of how economic behaviour affects the environment. Field survey data from 193 livestock grazing households combined with remotely sensed net primary productivity (NPP) data on the Qinghai-Tibetan-Plateau was used to develop a directional output-orientation distance function. The average efficiency of livestock grazing households is 0.817 when incorporating grazing pressure as an undesirable output, which means that households can achieve 18.3% more output and decrease proportional grazing pressure holding all inputs fixed. The relative shadow price of undesirable grazing pressure to good output grazing revenue is estimated to be between 1.795 and 3.986. According to the Morishima elasticity of substitution between inputs, there is a significant complementary relationship between grassland, labour and capital.

Keywords

directional distance function; Morishima elasticity of substitution; shadow price; technical efficiency

Published in

Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics
2017, Volume: 61, number: 4, pages: 645-662

SLU Authors

• Huang, Wei

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology
Economics


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8489.12225

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/84962