Performance Evaluation of China Forestry Insurance Subsidy and Measurement of the Optimal Subsidy Scale

Based on the theory related to the efficiency of fiscal expenditure, the efficiency of forest insurance financial subsidies in China was studied. Firstly, the comprehensive efficiency evaluation index system of my country's forest insurance financial subsidies is constructed from the perspectives of economic efficiency and social efficiency, and the entropy weighting method was used to measure the subsidy efficiency values by province for 2019. Then, incorporating the scale of subsidies into the production function, the data of each province in China from 2013-2019 were used to explore the impact of different factors on the efficiency of financial subsidies for forest insurance and to measure the optimal scale of forest insurance subsidies in China. It is found that economic efficiency is given more weight than social efficiency in evaluating the efficiency of financial subsidies for forest insurance; the scale of government financial subsidies has a significant positive driving effect on the efficiency of subsidies, while the level of economic development of the place also has an important impact on the efficiency of forest insurance financial subsidies; In addition, the production function method shows that the subsidy efficiency is maximized when the government forest insurance premium subsidy reaches 4.21% of the primary forestry industry output, but the actual scale of subsidies in most regions of the country is still far smaller than the optimal level. Based on the above findings, this paper proposes the following recommendations: to expand the scope of subsidies and implement forest insurance nationwide; to increase the financial subsidies, strive to narrow the difference with the optimal scale, and increase the subsidy ratio differently according to the actual situation of the economic development level and the amount of subsidies in each region; to pay attention to the improvement of economic efficiency while taking into account social efficiency; the government should comprehensively determine the optimal subsidy scale of forest insurance according to the target scale of forestry output value and the optimal subsidy scale ratio.