Efficiency and factors influencing it in forest districts in southern Poland: Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

The paper presents the efficiency evaluation of forest districts in Southern Poland carried out using the standard Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) which is a nonparametric mathematical programming technique. The study aims to evaluate the efficiency and identify the external factors affecting the efficiency of forest districts by using the Tobit econometric model. The study was conducted for 113 forest districts in four Regional Directorates of State Forests (in Katowice, Krak ' ow, Krosno and Wroclaw) and covered the period from 2008 to 2012. The results show differences in the use of economic and financial resources by the analysed forest districts. Lowland forest districts were more efficient that highland ones, both in terms of financial efficiency and efficiency of economic resources. In addition, efficiency was significantly influenced by various exogenous factors, depending on the category of forest districts. The analysis showed that financial efficiency of lowland forest districts was significantly influenced by population density, with negative effects on economic performance. In turn, efficiency of economic resources in this group was significantly negatively influenced by the number of forest complexes and population density. In the case of the highland forest districts, their financial efficiency was positively influenced by the number of forest complexes and negatively influenced by the area of nature reserves. However, efficiency of economic resources of the highland forest districts was not affected by any of these factors. The combination of the DEA method with the Tobit econometric model appears to be a valuable and useful tool for identifying factors affecting the efficiency of forest districts.