Abstract
Enhancing mariculture’s green total factor productivity (GTFP) is essential to balance industrial growth with ecology, safeguard global food security, and meet UN Sustainable Development Goal 14 amid mounting marine stress. As a global leading mariculture producer, China provides a typical research sample. This study constructs a mariculture GTFP measurement index system, estimates GTFP in China’s coastal provinces via the global Super-SBM model, identifies root causes of efficiency loss, and explores influencing factors and spatial spillover effects using a spatial econometric model. The results show that the overall mariculture GTFP of China’s coastal provinces exhibits a fluctuating upward trend with significant regional heterogeneity, specifically presenting a distribution pattern of “the highest in the South China Sea Region, followed by the East China Sea Region, and the lowest in the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea Region”. Meanwhile, mariculture GTFP shows significant positive spatial autocorrelation, with distinct High-High and Low-Low agglomeration characteristics. Excessive resource consumption and undesirable output discharge are the core drivers of efficiency loss. For direct effects, industrial scale, industrial structure, fishermen’s income, transportation accessibility, internet development, technology adoption, and environmental regulation significantly boost local GTFP, while fishery disasters exert a significant negative impact. For spatial spillovers, industrial scale, industrial structure, and internet development show significant positive effects, while fishermen’s income and urbanization present negative effects. Based on these findings, this study proposes targeted multi-stakeholder optimization paths, providing decision support for China’s mariculture green development and replicable experience for global coastal countries.