Will Climate Endowment Affect the Improvement of Agricultural Production Efficiency? Evidence From Cities in Zhejiang Province, China

Climate change poses constraints on nature-based agricultural productivity, necessitating an understanding of urban agriculture's performance across varying climatic conditions. This study examines the impacts of temperature, precipitation, and evapotranspiration production potential on agricultural production efficiency using a pooled OLS model. The results show that there is a spatial pattern of alternating high and low agricultural production efficiency units, and in urban areas where agricultural production efficiency values hover around 0.5, there still exists significant potential for improvement. Through regression analysis, results show that the production potential of precipitation has a significantly positive impact on improving agricultural production efficiency. However, the effects of temperature production potential, evapotranspiration production potential, and insolation on agricultural production efficiency are either not significant or exhibit poor stability. The results of the heterogeneity test show that the effect of precipitation production potential on enhancing agricultural production efficiency varies between cities in northeastern and southwestern Zhejiang, with only a few cities experiencing significant benefits. Furthermore, the innovation of this study resides in its comprehensive application of management science, climatology, geography, and other interdisciplinary approaches to deeply explore the influences of different climatic resource endowments on agricultural production efficiency from a spatial perspective. This interdisciplinary research approach provides fresh insights into how urban agriculture can be optimized under complex and ever-changing climatic conditions.