| 英文摘要 |
This study conducted a questionnaire survey of the general managers and extension managers of farmers’ associations in Taiwan. We collected data on the personality traits, job rotation, and tenure of extension managers and examined the proportion of fixed assets being utilized in extension departments. We adopted the metafrontier model based on output distance function to evaluate the technical efficiencies of 192 extension departments of Taiwan’s farmers’ associations over the period of 2009-2011. Empirical findings were as follows: Firstly, it is shown that some of the manager personality traits are significantly related to the technical inefficiency of extension departments. Besides, managers with more often job rotation experiences prior to get the manager position, or with less job rotations after becoming the manager, would help to upgrade the performances of extension departments. Secondly, the average meta-technical efficiency for the whole sample is 0.6007, in which the average efficiency score of rural farmers’ associations was significantly higher than those of urban and mixed-type farmers’ associations. With a mean of 0.7458, the technology gap ratio of rural farmers’ associations was significantly higher than that of urban farmers’ associations. Furthermore, both of the meta-technical efficiency and technology gap ratio have deteriorated gradually. Lastly, for the inefficient farmers’ associations, increase their outputs, in particular the revenues from projects, would benefit to enhance the efficiencies of the extension departments. |
