IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v69y2010i9p1748-1755.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating China's urban environmental sustainability with Data Envelopment Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Yu, Yan
  • Wen, Zongguo

Abstract

China's rapid urbanization has been characterized by excessive economic growth and a series of environmental issues. The urban environmental sustainability of 46 typical Chinese cities in 2007 was evaluated with Data Envelopment Analysis in this paper, and the Malmquist Productivity Index was used to identify the change within 2006-2007. This analysis employed indicators from economic, environmental, and resource sub-systems which are frequently involved in the concept of environmental sustainability. We introduced projecting and benchmarking as two possible approaches for less sustainable cities to refer to their peers. Based on the computed results and empirical analysis, the roles of GDP per capita, city scale, and industrial structure as influence factors of environmental sustainability were explored; and the regional disparity of urban environmental sustainability was also investigated. The results show: (1) 24% of the sample cities (e.g. Beijing, Hohhot, etc.) are relatively "environmentally sustainable." The efficiency scores of Urumqi rank the last. (2) GDP per capita, city scale, and industrial structure factors all exert significant influence on urban environmental sustainability. (3) The environmental sustainability of southeast cities leads the 6 major Chinese regions, and cities around the Bohai area are rapidly approaching environmental sustainability.

Suggested Citation

  • Yu, Yan & Wen, Zongguo, 2010. "Evaluating China's urban environmental sustainability with Data Envelopment Analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 1748-1755, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:9:p:1748-1755
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(10)00149-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kuosmanen, Timo & Kortelainen, Mika, 2007. "Valuing environmental factors in cost-benefit analysis using data envelopment analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 56-65, April.
    2. Odeck, James, 2009. "Statistical precision of DEA and Malmquist indices: A bootstrap application to Norwegian grain producers," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1007-1017, October.
    3. Gene M. Grossman & Alan B. Krueger, 1995. "Economic Growth and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(2), pages 353-377.
    4. Daly, Herman E, 1974. "The Economics of the Steady State," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(2), pages 15-21, May.
    5. R. D. Banker & A. Charnes & W. W. Cooper, 1984. "Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1078-1092, September.
    6. Wen, Zongguo & Zhang, Kunmin & Du, Bin & Li, Yadong & Li, Wei, 2007. "Case study on the use of genuine progress indicator to measure urban economic welfare in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2-3), pages 463-475, August.
    7. Fare, Rolf, et al, 1989. "Multilateral Productivity Comparisons When Some Outputs Are Undesirable: A Nonparametric Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(1), pages 90-98, February.
    8. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    9. Zhou, P. & Ang, B.W. & Poh, K.L., 2006. "Slacks-based efficiency measures for modeling environmental performance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 111-118, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xiang Ji & Jie Wu & Qingyuan Zhu & Jiasen Sun, 2019. "Using a hybrid heterogeneous DEA method to benchmark China’s sustainable urbanization: an empirical study," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 278(1), pages 281-335, July.
    2. Sueyoshi, Toshiyuki & Yuan, Yan & Goto, Mika, 2017. "A literature study for DEA applied to energy and environment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 104-124.
    3. Charles-Henri DiMaria, 2014. "Sustainability matters," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 1257-1269, May.
    4. Firnkorn, Jörg & Müller, Martin, 2011. "What will be the environmental effects of new free-floating car-sharing systems? The case of car2go in Ulm," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(8), pages 1519-1528, June.
    5. Yu, Junqing & Zhou, Kaile & Yang, Shanlin, 2019. "Land use efficiency and influencing factors of urban agglomerations in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    6. William H. Alfonso Piña & Clara Inés Pardo Martínez, 2016. "Development and Urban Sustainability: An Analysis of Efficiency Using Data Envelopment Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-15, February.
    7. Wang, Zhaohua & Feng, Chao, 2015. "A performance evaluation of the energy, environmental, and economic efficiency and productivity in China: An application of global data envelopment analysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 617-626.
    8. Zhang, Lin & An, Yao, 2017. "The government capacity on industrial pollution management in Shanxi province: A response impulse analysis," MPRA Paper 94796, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Laura Calzada-Infante & Ana María López-Narbona & Alberto Núñez-Elvira & Javier Orozco-Messana, 2020. "Assessing the Efficiency of Sustainable Cities Using an Empirical Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-13, March.
    10. Cai, Bofeng & Guo, Huanxiu & Ma, Zipeng & Wang, Zhixuan & Dhakal, Shobhakar & Cao, Libin, 2019. "Benchmarking carbon emissions efficiency in Chinese cities: A comparative study based on high-resolution gridded data," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 242(C), pages 994-1009.
    11. Corrado Lo Storto, 2016. "Ecological Efficiency Based Ranking of Cities: A Combined DEA Cross-Efficiency and Shannon’s Entropy Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-29, January.
    12. Fang‐Li Ruan & Liang Yan, 2022. "Challenges facing indicators to become a universal language for sustainable urban development," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 41-57, February.
    13. Ze Xu & Jianjun Zhang & Chu Li & Zhenyu Li & Yongheng Rao & Tianyu Lu, 2017. "A Road to Sustainable Development of Chinese Cities: A Perception of Improving Urban Management Efficiency Based on Two-Level Production Factors," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-16, November.
    14. Yang, Wen-Chi & Lee, Yuh-Ming & Hu, Jin-Li, 2016. "Urban sustainability assessment of Taiwan based on data envelopment analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 341-353.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pham, Manh D. & Zelenyuk, Valentin, 2019. "Weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis: A new taxonomy of reference technology sets," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 274(1), pages 186-198.
    2. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2011. "A conditional full frontier modelling for analyzing environmental efficiency and economic growth," MPRA Paper 32839, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Zhou, P. & Ang, B.W. & Poh, K.L., 2008. "A survey of data envelopment analysis in energy and environmental studies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 1-18, August.
    4. Wang, Ke & Wei, Yi-Ming & Huang, Zhimin, 2018. "Environmental efficiency and abatement efficiency measurements of China's thermal power industry: A data envelopment analysis based materials balance approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 269(1), pages 35-50.
    5. Christina Bampatsou & George Hadjiconstantinou, 2009. "The use of the DEA method for simultaneous analysis of the interrelationships among economic growth, environmental pollution and energy consumption," International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research (IJBESAR), International Hellenic University (IHU), Kavala Campus, Greece (formerly Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Institute of Technology - EMaTTech), vol. 2(2), pages 65-86, December.
    6. George Halkos & George Papageorgiou, 2016. "Spatial environmental efficiency indicators in regional waste generation: a nonparametric approach," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(1), pages 62-78, January.
    7. Andreas Dellnitz & Madjid Tavana & Rajiv Banker, 2023. "A novel median-based optimization model for eco-efficiency assessment in data envelopment analysis," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 322(2), pages 661-690, March.
    8. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2011. "Does the Kyoto Protocol Agreement matters? An environmental efficiency analysis," MPRA Paper 30652, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Sun, Jiasen & Yuan, Yang & Yang, Rui & Ji, Xiang & Wu, Jie, 2017. "Performance evaluation of Chinese port enterprises under significant environmental concerns: An extended DEA-based analysis," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 75-86.
    10. Xiang Ji & Jiasen Sun & Qunwei Wang & Qianqian Yuan, 2019. "Revealing Energy Over-Consumption and Pollutant Over-Emission Behind GDP: A New Multi-criteria Sustainable Measure," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 54(4), pages 1391-1421, December.
    11. Wang, Zhaohua & Feng, Chao, 2015. "Sources of production inefficiency and productivity growth in China: A global data envelopment analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 380-389.
    12. Ke Wang & Yi-Ming Wei & Zhimin Huang, 2017. "Environmental efficiency and abatement efficiency measurements of China¡¯s thermal power industry: A data envelopment analysis based materials balance approach," CEEP-BIT Working Papers 108, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEP), Beijing Institute of Technology.
    13. Chang, Young-Tae & Zhang, Ning & Danao, Denise & Zhang, Nan, 2013. "Environmental efficiency analysis of transportation system in China: A non-radial DEA approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 277-283.
    14. Xu, Chong, 2023. "Towards balanced low-carbon development: Driver and complex network of urban-rural energy-carbon performance gap in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    15. Kao, Chiang & Hwang, Shiuh-Nan, 2021. "Measuring the effects of undesirable outputs on the efficiency of production units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 292(3), pages 996-1003.
    16. Atkinson, Scott E. & Tsionas, Mike G., 2021. "Generalized estimation of productivity with multiple bad outputs: The importance of materials balance constraints," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 292(3), pages 1165-1186.
    17. Zhou, Xiaoyan & Zhang, Jie & Li, Junpeng, 2013. "Industrial structural transformation and carbon dioxide emissions in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 43-51.
    18. Trinks, Arjan & Mulder, Machiel & Scholtens, Bert, 2020. "An Efficiency Perspective on Carbon Emissions and Financial Performance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    19. M. Lábaj & M. Luptáčik & E. Nežinský, 2014. "Data envelopment analysis for measuring economic growth in terms of welfare beyond GDP," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(3), pages 407-424, August.
    20. Zhicheng Lai & Lei Li & Zhuomin Tao & Tao Li & Xiaoting Shi & Jialing Li & Xin Li, 2023. "Spatio-Temporal Evolution and Influencing Factors of Ecological Well-Being Performance from the Perspective of Strong Sustainability: A Case Study of the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-25, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:9:p:1748-1755. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.