Urban sustainability assessment of Taiwan based on data envelopment analysis

Wen-Chi Yang, Yuh-Ming Lee and Jin-Li Hu ()

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2016, vol. 61, issue C, 341-353

Abstract: The rapid process of urbanization brings forth growing concerns about the sustainability of cities. This study adopts an extended urban metabolism framework to assess urban sustainability and utilizes a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with undesirable outputs that takes pollutions into account in order to measure the aggregate urban input–output efficiency of Taiwan׳s 22 administrative regions. The model not only compares aggregate urban efficiency, but also identifies which input or output item should be adjusted and what the target values are. The results indicate that Taipei City and Lienchiang County are the most sustainable cities in Taiwan. This study also proposes several indices, categorized as resource efficiency and pollution efficiency. In terms of resource efficiency, the findings present that Taiwan needs to improve its electricity and water efficiencies the most. With regard to pollution efficiency, garbage efficiency performs the best. Finally, industrial structure has a strong influence on resource efficiency and pollution efficiency.

Keywords: Undesirable outputs; Window analysis; Urban metabolism; Aggregate efficiency; Disaggregate efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032116300326
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:rensus:v:61:y:2016:i:c:p:341-353

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2016.04.015

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().