Land Circulation, Scale Operation, and Agricultural Carbon Reduction Efficiency: Evidence from China

Table 1

Definitions and descriptive statistics of variables.

Type	Name	Definition and calculation method	Mean	Standard error
Explained variable	Agricultural CRE	Measured by SBM-DEA	0.439	0.250
Key explanatory variables	Land circulation	Transferred farmland area/contracted farmland area	0.216	0.170
Mediator variable	Scale operation	Farmland area/total labor in planting industry (hectares/person)	1.052	0.709
Control variables	Farmland area	Farmland area (×10^5 hectares)	43.629	30.958
	Planting structure	Sown area of food crops/total sown area of all crops	0.662	0.134
	Human capital	Mean years of education in rural areas (years)	7.533	0.683
	Effective irrigation rate	Effective irrigation area/farmland area	0.518	0.224
	Agricultural disaster rate	Disaster-affected sown area/total sown area of crops	0.215	0.151
	Product price	Production price index of planting industry in the previous year, deflated with 2004 as the base period	1.502	0.353
	Production cost	Price index for agricultural production means in the current year, deflated with 2005 as the base period	1.401	0.238
	Farmer income	Per-capita disposable income of rural residents (10,000 yuan), deflated with 2005 as the base period	0.673	0.365
	Urbanization rate	Urban population/total population	0.535	0.276
	Financial support	Fiscal expenditure on agriculture/total output of AFAF	15.944	21.913
	Policy regulation	0 = before 2015; 1 = after 2015	0.286	0.452

(1) On the human capital in rural areas, the years of education were recorded as 0 year, 6 years, 9 years, 12 years, and 16 years for the illiterate, primary school graduates, junior high school graduates, senior high school graduates, and graduates from junior college and above, respectively. Then, the mean years of education were calculated by dividing the number of people in each group with the total population in rural areas. (2) Since 2015, China launched many green agricultural development policies, such as the Zero-Increase Campaign of Fertilizers and Pesticides, and Farmland Quality Protection and Improvement Action. These policies, which advocate reducing chemical inputs and improving farming methods, are directly related to agricultural carbon emissions.