Abstract
This study was conducted to survey and diagnose operation status of the agricultural machinery rental service, analyse and compare operational efficiency among 82 city and county ATDEC (agricultural technology development and extension center) using the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) method, and recommend future direction, for improvement of the business. Input variables were invested budget and labor, and output variable was rental return. Percentages of return to investment on the rental service were calculated as 68.3% and 63.9% when analyzed with CCR (Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes) and BCC (Banker, Charnes and Cooper) models, respectively, indicating inefficiency of the service operation. Increase of rental charge would increase efficiency by 63.9~68.3% depending on models, and decrease of financial and labor investment would improve the efficiency by about 11.3%. Technical efficiency would be more important than scale efficiency, therefore adjustment of over-invested budget and labor needed to be made together with increase of rental charge to improve the operation. Among the ATDECs providing the rental service, 6 (7.3%), 43 (52.4%), and 33 (40.2%) were in state of CRS (constant return to scale), IRS (increasing return to scale), and DRS (decreasing return to scale), respectively. These indicated public aspects of the rental system, over-investment, lack of output component for input component, meaning that scale income would be increased by qualitative expand of rental charge. Efficiency analysis of the rental system by region showed that efficient ATDECs to be benchmarked by others were in the order of DMU-70, DMU-54, DMU-29, DMU-5, DMU-22, DMU-2, and DMU-61. More comprehensive and extensive survey and analyses would be necessary in the future.