A Two-Stage Data Envelopment Analysis Approach Incorporating the Global Bounded Adjustment Measure to Evaluate the Efficiency of Medical Waste Recycling Systems with Undesirable Inputs and Outputs

Wen-Jing Song, Jian-Wei Ren (), Chun-Hua Chen, Chen-Xi Feng, Lin-Qiang Li and Chong-Yu Ma
Additional contact information
Wen-Jing Song: Transportation Institute, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010030, China
Jian-Wei Ren: Transportation Institute, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010030, China
Chun-Hua Chen: College of Economics and Management, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot 010018, China
Chen-Xi Feng: Transportation Institute, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010030, China
Lin-Qiang Li: Transportation Institute, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010030, China
Chong-Yu Ma: Transportation Institute, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010030, China

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 10, 1-29

Abstract: With the ever-increasing focus on sustainable development, recycling waste and renewable use of waste products has earned immense consideration from academics and policy makers. The serious pollution, complex types, and strong infectivity of medical waste have brought serious challenges to management. Although several researchers have addressed the issue by optimizing medical waste management networks and systems, there is still a significant gap in systematically evaluating the efficiency of medical waste recycling systems. Therefore, this paper proposes a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach that combines the virtual frontier and the global bounded adjustment measure (BAM-VF-G), considering both undesirable inputs and outputs. In the first stage, the BAM-G model is used to evaluate the efficiency of medical waste recycling systems, and the BAM-VF-G model is used to further rank super-efficient medical waste recycling systems. In the second stage, two types of efficiency decomposition models are proposed. The first type of models decompose unified efficiency into production efficiency (PE) and environment efficiency (EE). Depending upon the system structure, the second type of models decompose unified efficiency into the efficiency of the medical waste collection and transport subsystem (MWCS) and the efficiency of the medical waste treatment subsystem (MWTS). The novel approach is used to measure the efficiency of the medical waste recycling systems in China’s new first-tier cities, and we find that (1) Foshan ranks the highest in efficiency, followed by Tianjin and Qingdao, with efficiency values of 0.386, 0.180, and 0.130, respectively; (2) the EE lacks resilience and fluctuated the most from 2017 to 2022; and (3) the efficiency of MWCSs has always been lower than that of MWTSs and is a critical factor inhibiting the overall efficiency of medical waste recycling systems.

Keywords: medical waste; global bounded adjusted measure; virtual frontier; efficiency decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/10/4023/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/10/4023/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:10:p:4023-:d:1392555

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().