The spatiotemporal dynamic evolution and influencing factors of agricultural green total factor productivity in Southeast Asia (ASEAN-6)

The assessment of agricultural green total factor productivity (GTFP) is indispensable for simultaneous increase in production efficiency and eco-environmental performance to enhance regionally coordinated sustainable green development of agriculture. In this context, considering undesirable output of carbon emissions in the total factor framework, this is a pioneer research to analyze the spatiotemporal dynamic evolution and several influencing factors of agricultural GTFP in six Southeast Asian (ASEAN-6) countries by adopting the global Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index, which can overcome the infeasibility issue and the panel quantile regression, which can overcome limitations of the conventional regression approaches, that is, the distribution of the error terms and sensitivity to outliers. The empirical results indicate: (a) agricultural GTFP increased during 2000–2019 signifying a sustainable route for agricultural green development at regional level; (b) the higher the level of green technology, the higher would be the possibility of agricultural GTFP improvement; therefore, green technological innovation was the sole contributor whereas green technical efficiency restrict agricultural GTFP; (c) four out of six countries had achieved technological progress with significant increase in their innovative capabilities whereas five out of six countries had stagnant technical efficiency; (d) all the influencing factors of agricultural GTFP had a heterogenous affect across different quantiles. The endowment structure and regional opening demonstrated the highest significant favorable impact across the lower and the higher green productive countries. In contrast, agricultural carbon intensity had a highly significant heterogeneous inhibitory impact whereas agricultural energy intensity had increasing inhibitory impact from the lower to the higher green productive countries. The essential strategies to improve agricultural GTFP in ASEAN-6 countries include encouraging regionally coordinated agricultural development, strengthening technological advancements, promoting production efficiency in terms of green development, optimizing production structure, mutual recognition and expansion of agricultural opening-up level, and minimizing energy and carbon intensity of agriculture sector.