Influence of the operating environment on the technical efficiency of forest harvesting operations

ABSTRACT

Timber harvesting efficiency is affected by stand and terrain factors that interact with the system itself. Using an existing database of completed harvest operations that include not only productivity and costs but also system, terrain and stand factors for the period 2008–2015, this study adopts a two-stage approach to determine the influence of the operating environment on the technical efficiency of forest harvesting operation. In the first stage, data envelopment analysis is used to estimate the technical efficiency of the operations and in the second stage, the efficiency index is regressed against a set of exogenous factors to determine their effects on the efficiency index. The results from the study indicate that the size of operation, forest terrain, number of log sorts and piece size, all significantly (p < 0.01) influence the technical efficiency of forest harvesting operation. This study is the first to apply the two-stage approach in determining the effect of the operating environment on technical efficiency of forest harvesting operations.

KEYWORDS:

• Data envelopment analysis
• exogenous factors
• harvesting contractors
• Tobit regression

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all FFR forestry companies and logging contractors whose operational data were used in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.