Applying an Alternative Approach for Assessing Sustainable Road Transport: A Benchmarking Analysis on EU Countries

Yongjun Shen, Qiong Bao and Elke Hermans
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Yongjun Shen: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Sipailou 2, Nanjing 210096, China
Qiong Bao: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Sipailou 2, Nanjing 210096, China
Elke Hermans: Transportation Research Institute (IMOB), Hasselt University, Wetenschapspark 5 bus 6, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-16

Abstract: Road transport plays an important role in economic development, trade and social integration. However, it is also responsible for certain negative impacts on environment and society. In order to achieve sustainable development, there is a growing need for a country to assess both the benefits from road transport and its undesirable costs, to compare them with those in other countries and to provide estimates of their future developments. In this research, starting from the identification of relevant factors (both desirable and undesirable), a benchmarking approach is proposed as an alternative way to assess sustainable road transport among the 28 EU countries. Meanwhile, the basic concept of data envelopment analysis (DEA) for benchmarking purpose is further extended to integrate both the desirable achievements and the undesirable costs in evaluation. As a result, an overall road transport sustainability score is computed for the 28 EU countries, which can be further split into two efficiency scores with respect to desirable and undesirable factors, respectively. Furthermore, after applying a clustering analysis that groups countries with inherent similarity in their practices, the model is adopted to identify best-performing and underperforming countries within the cluster, as well as the reference sets for those underperforming ones, based on which valuable insights are gained, enabling decision makers to prioritize their actions towards a more sustainable road transport system in the future.

Keywords: sustainable road transport; benchmarking analysis; data envelopment analysis; desirable achievements; undesirable costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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