Measurement, Obstacle Analysis, and Regional Disparities in the Development Level of Agricultural Machinery Socialization Services (AMSS) in China’s Hilly and Mountainous Areas

By constructing a comprehensive evaluation index system for the development level of Agricultural Machinery Socialization Services (AMSS) in China’s hilly and mountainous areas, the article adopts the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) entropy weight method to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the development level of AMSS in China’s 17 major hilly mountainous provinces, and utilizes the obstacle degree model and the Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition method to deeply explore the developmental constraints and regional differences in characteristics. The results of the study show that the development level of AMSS in all provinces is generally on the rise, and the overall development level of the Southwest region is relatively lagging behind, with significant differences from other regions. The obstacle degree model shows that industrial development, Government funding, and farmland construction are the main factors constraining AMSS in hilly and mountainous areas, specifically, the degree of coverage of AMSS, the percentage of agricultural machinery professional cooperatives, the degree of land fragmentation, and the level of agricultural machinery extension inputs have a greater impact on the level of development of AMSS. Dagum Gini coefficient calculations show that the overall relative differences in development levels have a tendency to decrease, but the level of development of agricultural machinery socialization in the southwestern hilly and mountainous second-maturity areas is still low, with an imbalance in development within the region and a more significant gap with the development levels of other hilly and mountainous regions.