Regional differences and dynamic evolution of agricultural water resources utilization efficiency in China

Improving water resources utilization efficiency is conducive to achieving the sustainable development of water resources. It is essential to explore the regional differences and dynamic evolution of agricultural water resources utilization efficiency in China to promote high-quality development of agriculture. In this study, based on the unexpected output, we build a super slack-based measure model to measure agricultural water resources utilization efficiency in China’s provinces from 2007 to 2018. In addition, we use the Dagum Gini coefficient to analyze the source of regional differences. Finally, we construct the distributed dynamics model to explore the distribution of the dynamic evolution trend of China’s agricultural water resources utilization efficiency. The results reveal that regional difference is the main source of the overall difference in agricultural water resources utilization efficiency in China. Spatial imbalance exists in the development of agricultural water resources utilization efficiency in China. The agricultural water resources utilization efficiency in various provinces and regions of China is relatively stable, having the characteristics of club convergence. The probability of maintaining the initial state is high, and the internal mobility is low. However, with time, the degree of club convergence decreases.