台灣地區各縣市消防機關效率評估之研究

Abstract

雖然已邁入廿一世紀高科技的時代，人類還是難逃祝融的威脅。全世界各地仍不斷傳出重大傷亡的火災。例如今(2003)年4月8日俄羅斯西伯利亞一所中學不幸發生火災，當場燒死21名學生和1名老師。而於民國八十年初期，台灣地區也曾歷經動輒死傷二、三十人以上的重大火災，社會大眾震驚之餘，政府也體會到加強維護公共安全的急迫性，開始著手進行警消分隸的政策。民國八十四年三月一日內政部消防署成立，修正消防法等相關法規後，各縣市才依法陸續成立消防局，自此消防體系正式運作，使得台灣近來年重大傷亡的公安火災已逐漸消聲匿跡。 本研究的目的在於發展適當的評估模式，探討政府部門及非營利組織效率評估的相關研究文獻 (尤其是消防機關方面)，來建立一套適用於各縣市消防機關的效率評估模式，同時藉由資料包絡分析法求得各縣市的技術效率、純技術效率及規模效率，並探討無技術效率原因係來自不具純技術效率抑或不具規模效率。其次，本研究亦討論各縣市消防機關的規模報酬情形，並建議其應採用規模縮小或規模擴張的方式來改善效率。最後，進行二階段分析模式，納入各項消防機關無法直接掌控的環境因素，進行截斷式迴歸分析（即Tobit迴歸），來據以了解各消防機關間「因先天環境變數的不同所造成相對效率顯著差異」的真正原因。 本研究的結果有助於改善現行消防公共安全績效評核方式，另外可協助各縣市政府具體改善效率的方法，著重於資源配置、目標設定及規模增減等。另一方面研究結果顯示各項環境變數中，以轄區人口數的多寡對於消防機關相對效率有顯著的影響，此結果可作為消防機關爾後擬定消防公共安全政策的參考，例如可於人口聚集處強化該地之火災預防及火災搶救作為等。

In spite of the high-tech era in the 21-century nowadays, people still suffer threat from the fire. There are serious casualties around the world because of fires recently. For example, a fire happened in a high school in Siberia of Russia on April 8, 2003. Unfortunately, it caused 21 students and one teacher burned and died. And at the early period of 1990s in Taiwan, fires of having casualties about 20 to 30 people had ever occurred as well. After these accidents made the public shake, the government had realized the urgency to improve the public fire safety and had begun to amend the policy to divorce the fire agency from the police system. Consequently, the National Fire Agency was established on March 1, 1995 by the Ministry of the Interior and continually revised relative regulations and laws about fire prevention. Each county and city founded the fire departments in accordance to the law. From then on, the entire fire-fighting system began to work on and made serious public fires disappear in Taiwan recently. The purpose of this study is to develop the suitable estimation model. Through the correlative literatures about the government sections and the nonprofit organizations, we can establish an efficiency estimation model fitting for every county/city fire departments. In the meanwhile, we can get Technical Efficiency, Pure Technical Efficiency and Scale Efficiency through Data Envelopment Analysis and will find out the inefficiency reasons. Furthermore, this study also discusses the return to scale of every county/city fire departments and provides suggestion to improve efficiency. Finally, this study adopts the two stages analysis model and the Tobit regression to understand the real reasons as a result of the original differences between environments of county/city fire departments. The result of this study can assist to improve the present performance estimation model of public fire safety. Moreover, on the one hand, it can provide the practical methods to improve efficiency for the county/city governments. On the other hand, it shows that the number of people under the jurisdiction have the significance level to the relative efficiency of fire departments. This consequence can be a reference that the fire departments draw up the policy of public fire safety. For example, fire departments can strengthen the measures of fire protection and fire suppression at the places with a large number of residents.