Research On The Investment Mechanism Of Geological Exploration From The Heterogeneity Perspective

With the continued growth in demand of mineral resources, geological explorationinvestment in China has intensified and the mechanism of geological explorationinvestment has increasingly become a research hotspot. The geological explorationinvestment mechanisms are closely related with the national geological work systemsand mechanisms which have a certain characteristics in different countries. Academiccircles has achieved outstanding results on the study of the mechanism of geologicalexploration investment; however, the literatures that discusses the geologicalinvestment according to the investment agent, cost and areas and adopts econometricmodels are scarce.In order to ensure the long-term stability of national geologicalwork and sustained economic and social progress, this article, from the perspective ofheterogeneity, studies China’s geological exploration investment mechanism.First of all, from the perspective of agent heterogeneity, discusses China’sgeological investment agents’ selection, funds pulling effect, the scale of fiscalinvestment in geological exploration at industry level, to improve adequate resourcesupplying ability for the future economic society. CES production function model isapplied to measure the economic impact of geological survey at the industry level.The results suggest that the synergistic contribution of central&local fiscalinvestments and social capital is significant to the price of mining rights. The mostdramatic impact is from social capital, and the next, the impact from local fiscalinvestment. The central fiscal funds play an important role to link up investments indifferent prospecting stages and to share the risk. When the relative intensity changesbetween central fiscal and local fiscal, central fiscal and social capital, local fiscal andsocial capital in the logarithm square at1unit, the price of mining rights has2.065,1.359and0.178times the positive long-term effects, respectively. Prospecting&mining rights purchased by social funds is96.14%of all the transferring selling prices. The social capital’s pulling effect in to geological survey&mining industry isobvious. Hines and Catephores’ investment acceleration model is applied to describethe scale determinants of fiscal investment on geological exploration in the currentterm which are value-added of mining rights, value of mining rights and fiscalinvestment in the last term.Secondly, from the perspective of cost heterogeneity, the analysis of changes inthe cost difference of typical minerals’ geological exploration at industry levelindicates that unit geological exploration cost of different minerals reserves varies atdifferent times, caused by the objective conditions and management factors. Based onthe analysis, the cost management strategies of geological exploration investment areproposed.Thirdly, from the perspective of spatial heterogeneity, raise the regional geologicalexploration strategy and provide policy recommendations on future regionalgeological exploration investment optimization and adjustment and improvement ofthe efficiency of the geological exploration funds, with the use of geographicinformation systems methods and mathematical statistics to measure differences ofthe efficiency, growth and intensity of the investment in geological exploration in thedifferent provinces. Different provinces geological exploration investment showing acertain spatial aggregation, western provinces is still the focus of investment and thegeological exploration funds tend to gradually flow to central and eastern. For thegeological exploration in various regions, investment efficiency, investment growthand investment intensity and distribution are not entirely consistent, which indicatesthat the potential and efficiency of the geological exploration investment in the centraland eastern regions needs to be further recognized.