Research On The Efficiency And Influencing Factors Of Basic Public Services In Zhejiang Province Under The Background Of Common Prosperity

With the rapid economic development and the growing demand for basic public services in China,the construction of the basic public service system,as an important foundation for promoting the goal of common prosperity,has made remarkable achievements after decades of development.At the same time,in order to pay more attention to ensuring and improving people’s livelihood,China has successively issued a series of laws,regulations and policies,such as the national basic public service standards(2021 Edition),which clarify the scope of basic public services,providing an important basis for the government to fulfill its duties and citizens to enjoy their rights according to law.It is undeniable that there are still many "shortcomings" in the field of basic public services in China at present,and the supply of basic public services by local governments still cannot meet the growing needs of the people,and is concentrated in the differences between urban and rural areas,regions and people.As an important window to achieve common prosperity in an all-round way,Zhejiang Province also has problems in the process of building the basic public service system,such as unbalanced development among regions,unreasonable distribution,low output efficiency and so on,which are inconsistent with the requirements of common prosperity.Therefore,this paper will closely focus on the background of common prosperity,explore the actual level of basic public services and its influencing factors in Zhejiang Province from the perspective of efficiency by constructing the efficiency evaluation system of basic public services,and put forward corresponding policy recommendations accordingly,which is of great significance for the high-quality development of common prosperity demonstration areas in Zhejiang Province.Through combing the existing academic research on common prosperity theory,public service theory and efficiency theory,this paper finds that there is a mutual promotion between basic public services and common prosperity from the theoretical level.According to the scope of basic public services,the efficiency evaluation index system including basic public education,culture and sports,social security and employment,and medical and health care is constructed.The Three-stage DEA model is selected to empirically measure the output efficiency of basic public services in 56 counties and cities in Zhejiang Province from 2011 to 2020,in order to obtain the true efficiency value of basic public service output after removing environmental factors and random interference;At the same time,the Malmquist index model is used to analyze the changes of the output efficiency of basic public services in Zhejiang Province in the past ten years from a dynamic perspective.On this basis,using the random effect Tobit model,the influencing factors of the output efficiency of basic public services are further studied from the regional economic structure and the supply and demand sides of basic public services,and the following conclusions are finally reached:(1)According to the calculation results of the three-stage DEA model,the output efficiency of basic public services in Zhejiang Province is significantly affected by four environmental variables: population density,GDP per capita,government size and financial autonomy,as well as random noise.After removing the above interference,the output efficiency of basic public services in most counties and cities has been significantly improved,and the spatial distribution shows the characteristics of "cluster" and contiguous.The output efficiency of basic public services in areas belonging to the same prefecture level city or geographically adjacent areas has a strong convergence;The output efficiency level of basic public services in accelerated development counties in mountainous areas is not high as a whole,with an average efficiency of only 0.907,while that in ordinary counties is 0.959,with a difference of 5.2%.There are obvious differences in the management level and technological innovation ability of the county and city governments for basic public services.(2)Combined with the results of Malmquist index model,it is found that the average change of Malmquist production index of basic public services in Zhejiang Province is 0.998,and the decrease of scale efficiency in the change of technical efficiency has obviously hindered the improvement of total factor productivity.Therefore,the overall level of basic public services in Zhejiang Province is high,but the scale of basic public services needs scientific and reasonable management,so as to form an effective scale effect.(3)In the research on the influencing factors of the output efficiency of basic public services based on the random effect Tobit model,the results show that the degree of marketization,the level of education,financial pressure and financial ability have a significant positive impact on the output efficiency of basic public services,and the degree of influence of the level of education is the most obvious;However,industrial structure and fiscal preference have a significant negative impact,and the income gap between urban and rural residents is not significant.Through the introduction of regional dummy variables,it can also be concluded that the output efficiency of basic public services in accelerated development counties in mountainous areas is lower than that in ordinary counties.However,the poverty alleviation policy of Zhejiang Province for accelerated development counties in mountainous areas does not have a significant impact on the output efficiency of basic public services in actual research.The innovation of this paper mainly includes: in the process of building the evaluation index system of the efficiency of basic public services,the three sub indicators of library collection per capita,sports venues per 10000 people,and theaters per 10000 people are used to measure cultural and sports services and included in the scope of research,which can more comprehensively measure the basic public service level of Zhejiang Province,Culture and sports,as a public product that can meet the needs of residents’ spiritual life,have become the focus of the whole society in recent years.In addition,the research perspective will go deep into the county level of Zhejiang Province,making the research object more specific and the research results more valuable.Studying the efficiency of basic public services in 56 counties and cities in Zhejiang Province is of great significance to the reform of basic public services policies in Zhejiang Province and the integrated development of basic public services in the province.It is also conducive to optimizing the theory and practice of supporting common prosperity,improving the system and mechanism of urban-rural integration and regional coordination,and providing reference for the high-quality development of basic public services in the country.