A Dynamic Analysis to Evaluate the Environmental Performance of Cities in China

Luqi Wang, Xiaolong Xue, Yue Shi, Zeyu Wang and Ankang Ji
Additional contact information
Luqi Wang: School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Xiaolong Xue: School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Yue Shi: School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Zeyu Wang: School of Management, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China
Ankang Ji: School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: With the contradiction between energy supply and demand around the world, urbanization formed with high-investment, high-consumption, and high-emission has significantly impaired the ecological environment of China. The evaluation of environmental impact is a must for decision-makings related to sustainable urbanization. This paper assessed the dynamic environmental performance of 285 cities in China from 2005 to 2013 based on the Malmquist-Luenberger index, an expanded data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. To ensure comparability among cities, a two-step clustering method was used to classify all cities into three types. From the results, we found (1) 166 and 185 cities’ environmental conditions remained the improvement during the research period under the meta-frontier and group frontier respectively. (2) Low and Medium energy intensity cities performed better than high energy intensity cities. (3) The environmental performance under the group frontier was overestimated compared with the meta-frontier. (4) The trends of environmental improvement and economic growth are significantly inconsistent. Overall, all ways to decrease undesirable outputs and increase desirable outputs, such as technological innovation, industrial structure optimization and regional cooperation, should be encouraged to achieve urban, regional and country sustainability.

Keywords: environment performance; data envelopment analysis; Malmquist-Luenberger index; dynamic analysis; China; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/3/862/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/3/862/ (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:10:y:2018:i:3:p:862-:d:136885

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 ().