Government behaviours in sustainable development of tea industry: empirical evidence from Fujian, China

Tea contributes significantly to the agricultural economy of the main producing areas. However, there are many factors hindering the sustainable development of the tea industry. In this study, we employed the geographical and temporal weighted regression (GTWR) model to analyse the spatiotemporal distribution and determinants of sustainable tea production in 67 counties in Fujian from 2008 to 2017. Hence, this paper considers the dependent variable, namely the sustainable development index, and the independent variables, namely the environmental regulation intensity (ERI), the government financial support (FIS), the development level of S&T and education (STE), regional development level (RDL), government concerns (GCO) and infrastructure construction (INC). The empirical results show that the influences of factors on sustainable development have obvious spatiotemporal heterogeneity. On the whole, ERI, FIS, GCO and INC show positive influences on sustainable development, while STE and RDL show negative influences. Ultimately, some practical policy recommendations are put forward.