Research On Poverty Alleviation Efficiency Of Solar Photovoltaic Poverty Alleviation Program

Poverty is a persistent disease of human society,which seriously hinders the human’s pursuit of a better life.Poverty eradication has always been a common challenge for the world’s stable socio-economic development.Since the 18^th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,China has taken targeted poverty alleviation as its primary strategy and has helped nearly 98.99 million rural poor people,832 poor counties,and128,000 poverty-stricken villages out of poverty under the leadership of the Party Central Committee with the Comrade Xi Jinping as the core,completed the arduous task of eliminating absolute poverty and made significant contributions to the development of global poverty alleviation.As one of the top ten targeted poverty alleviation projects,the solar photovoltaic（PV）poverty alleviation program（PPAP）has multiple advantages in alleviating poverty and promoting clean energy and will continue playing a role in underdeveloped areas and help achieve the"Double Carbon"goal.Therefore,how to fully use national resources,scientifically measure and improve the poverty alleviation efficiency of PPAP,and promote solar PV power generation to play a further role in Rural Revitalization has become a new research topic.In this context,under the guidance of project management theory,especially performance evaluation theory,anti-poverty theory,input-output theory,participatory development theory and structural theory,this study has explored the poverty reduction efficiency of PPAP and intended to provide references for the government’s renewable energy poverty alleviation decisions.This study has made an attempt to answer the following questions:（1）Is the investment in PPAP effective for poor villages?（2）Compared with other poverty alleviation means,how much does the PPAP contribute to the poverty alleviation efficiency of poor villages?（3）What factors affect the poverty reduction efficiency of PPAP?（4）How does PPAP optimize poverty reduction efficiency?（5）Under the country’s political will to develop new energy poverty alleviation,what are the experiences and expectations of poor villagers for photovoltaic poverty alleviation projects and their willingness to adopt solar energy technology?How can we improve the management level of PPAP?In order to answer the above questions scientifically,this study has conducted in-depth interviews and questionnaires in representative 52 poor villages and 1251 poor families to investigate the PPAP poverty alleviation efficiency based on the qualitative and quantitative research methods from the perspective of theoretical exploration and empirical analysis.Specifically,the main research content of this dissertation includes the following aspects:（1）it has reviewed domestic and foreign relevant literature,integrating the development process and frontier of relevant research,designed and formulated the research scheme of this study;（2）Based on relevant literature review and theoretical analysis,it has designed the measurement dimension of poverty reduction efficiency of PPAP from a comprehensive perspective of economy,society,ecology and infrastructure.More importantly,this study has taken the practice of targeted poverty alleviation in China into consideration,in which a poor object may enjoy the help of various poverty alleviation models;the poverty alleviation effect should not simply be judged by whether he has enjoyed the support of PPAP.Therefore,this study has taken poor villages as the research object and first measured the multi-dimensional poverty alleviation efficiency of all poverty alleviation models of the sample areas enjoyed.Then,it has built a research model for the PPAP poverty alleviation efficiency exploration that refers to the capital investment of PPAP relative to other models;（3）it has conducted an empirical analysis of PPAP poverty alleviation efficiency.Firstly,three counties were selected for each type of solar lighting resource areas in China,and then,a total of 52 sample villages were selected in these counties.Based on the field data,this study first evaluated the overall poverty reduction efficiency of targeted poverty alleviation projects through principal component analysis,data envelopment analysis,and super efficiency analysis.Secondly,grey correlation analysis is used to explore the PPAP poverty reduction efficiency;（4）it has made an effort to find the indicators of PPAP poverty alleviation efficiency.Firstly,this study used the spatial analysis and geospatial dislocation model to visually express each village’s comprehensive efficiency value,and observed whether the villages of each efficiency type have aggregation characteristics in geographical space.Secondly,stochastic frontier analysis is used to explore the factors and interference items that affect the poverty reduction efficiency of PPAP,in an attempt to provide an analytical basis for proposing the optimization method of poverty reduction efficiency of PPAP;（5）Based on the empirical analysis of the spatial difference and imbalance of poverty reduction efficiency,it has identified the key influencing factors,and the methods of optimizing poverty reduction efficiency were further explored by focus group interview analysis and multiple linear regression.Through the above theoretical and empirical research,this study has found that:（1）The six targeted poverty alleviation models,including PPAP,have significantly contributed to poverty reduction in 52 sample poor villages.（2）PPAP has played a relatively minor role in poverty alleviation compared with other methods,which means that greater investment in PPAP will have little impact on poverty alleviation efficiency in rural China.（3）29 of the 52 sample villages have not reached the ideal efficiency frontier（accounting for 55.67%）.And the significant regional differences are mainly due to the insufficient scale of poverty alleviation fund investment and the unreasonable proportion of fund distribution.（4）The willingness of poor villagers to adopt solar energy technology is the critical driving factor to PPAP poverty reduction efficiency.（5）Promoting PPAP policy forces must adapt to the psychological needs of micro individuals to effectively promote the poor’s solar PV adoption in the social poverty alleviation system of the governance process,which is the key to improve the poverty reduction efficiency of solar photovoltaic poverty alleviation projects.The main contributions and innovations of this study are presented in the following three aspects:（1）It has constructed the poverty reduction efficiency evaluation index system in poor villages.This study has maked up for the current lack of research focusing on poverty reduction efficiency at the level of poor villages.The existing literature focuses on the poverty reduction efficiency of poverty alleviation projects mainly on the income,consumption,assets,etc.of the poor population^[1-3];also,the evaluation of poor villages is limited to the environmental benefits^[4,5].This study has sheded a new light on poor villages based on the existing literature.Specifically,this study has constructed an evaluation index system of poverty reduction efficiency in a comprehensive perspective of economic level,social development,ecology and infrastructure construction.This study has provided a theoretical analysis framework for enriching the academic anti-poverty system with Chinese characteristics and the evaluation system of poverty reduction efficiency.（2）It has constructed a scientific evaluation model of PPAP poverty reduction efficiency.In the context of multiple targeted poverty alleviation projects being carried out simultaneously,poor villages and households often benefit from the joint assistance of several poverty alleviation models simultaneously.However,most existing studies evaluate the poverty reduction benefits of PPAP based on whether the target of assistance is the beneficiary of photovoltaic poverty alleviation,thus fail to separate the poverty reduction performance of photovoltaic poverty alleviation projects’capital investment and ignored the possible superposition effects of other poverty alleviation projects^[6,7].This study has proposed an evaluation model of solar photovoltaic poverty alleviation projects,i.e.,the overall poverty reduction efficiency contribution of PPAP could be explored by gray correlation analysis.Compared with the existing PPAP research,this study has both achieved more scientific results and measured the specific performance of PPAP in poverty reduction efficiency compared with other targeted poverty alleviation projects,which provides a new idea for the scientific exploration of poverty reduction efficiency of national poverty alleviation projects.（3）It has revealed the rate solar energy technology adoption rate and other key factors to improve poverty reduction efficiency.The existing literature on the poverty reduction performance of PPAP is still at the demonstration and evaluation stage^[7-9].Therefore,there is little literature on the spatial differences and imbalances of poverty reduction efficiency and exploring the strategies for improving poverty reduction efficiency of PPAP.Therefore,based on the abovementioned research,the spatial analysis method is adopted to visually express the efficiency value of each village,trying to reveal whether the poverty-stricken villages of various efficiency types have aggregation characteristics in geographical space.Furthermore,this study used stochastic frontier analysis to deeply explore the factors affecting poverty reduction efficiency and their interference items,revealing key influencing factors such as solar energy adoption rate.Finally,from the perspective of solar technology adoption,based on Giddens’structured theory,this study has explored methods to promote the willingness of poor villagers to adopt solar technology to improve the poverty reduction efficiency of PPAP,which helps to improve the national poverty alleviation governance system,and provides a new perspective for optimizing the allocation of poverty alleviation resources and promoting the sustainable development of renewable energy in China.