The intermediate approach to sustainability enhancement and scale-related measures in environmental assessment

Toshiyuki Sueyoshi and Mika Goto

European Journal of Operational Research, 2019, vol. 276, issue 2, 744-756

Abstract: Many studies have applied data envelopment analysis to environmental assessments. The approach measures the performance of various organizations with economic activities that use inputs to produce not only desirable (e.g., electricity) but also undesirable (e.g., CO2 emission) outputs. This study uses the method and discusses how to measure the level of sustainability, implying simultaneous achievement of economic prosperity and environmental protection within a unified framework. Conventionally, we classify this type of approach as either radial or non-radial. Recently, the intermediate approach, analytically located between them, has been proposed as the third alternative. This study discusses the methodological features of the intermediate approach. We focus in particular on its scale-related measures such as scale efficiency, returns to scale, and damages to scale. All of those measures can serve as new performance indicators for sustainability enhancement. As an illustrative example, we apply the proposed approach to assess the special districts of Tokyo and discuss those empirical results from the municipal planning.

Keywords: Data envelopment analysis; Environment; Sustainability; Intermediate approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221719300670
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ejores:v:276:y:2019:i:2:p:744-756

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2019.01.032

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().