Factors affecting efficiency of four-eye sleeper poly-culture in Nghia Hung district, Nam Dinh province, Vietnam : a DEA approach to technical efficiency

Abstract

This research estimated the technical, scale efficiency and its determinants of four-eye sleeper (Bostrichthys sinensis Lacépède, 1801) poly-culture in Nghia Hung district, Nam Dinh province, Vietnam. A nonparametric DEA approach were applied to evaluate technical and scale efficiency of farm level using input orientation DEA model. The study was based on the cross sectional primary data collected from 70 four-eye sleeper poly-culture households in Nghia Hung district, Nam Dinh, in 2009. The mean technical efficiency under CRS and VRS as well as scale efficiency were 86.44 percent, 90.24 percent and 95.66 percent, respectively. The difference between TE under CRS and VRS showed that the scale inefficiency existed. Regression analysis was used to investigate relationship between technical super-efficiency as a function of explanatory variables which included age, experience and education level of farm operators, stocking densities of fingerling and tiger shrimp, feed ratio and access into institutions as tranning course and credit. The regression analysis results showed that technical efficiency was influenced positively by experience and the number of year going to school of farmers, the farmer with higher experience and education will be more efficiency performance in aquaculture. Fingerling stocking density was also found positively significant impacted on technical efficiency while feed ratio measured in total feed cost to total four-eye sleeper output influenced negatively significant technical efficiency. Moreover, the empirical results were also found that the number of attendance times in training course of farmer effected positively significant on technical efficiency. The more number of times attending to training course of farmer is, the higher technical efficiency score the farmer will get. However, the others variables as age of farmer, tiger shrimp density stocking and debt ratio (credit) were not found statistically significant impact on technical efficiency in the sample farms. Keywords: Data envelopment analysis (DEA), technical efficiency, four-eye sleeper poly-culture, Nghia Hung, Vietnam.