Environmental Performance of China’s Industrial System Considering Technological Heterogeneity and Interaction

Lei Li, Ruizeng Zhao () and Feihua Huang
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Lei Li: College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211106, China
Ruizeng Zhao: School of Economics and Management, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621000, China
Feihua Huang: School of Business, Soochow University, Suzhou 215012, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-17

Abstract: The industrial sector, the backbone of China’s economic development, is a key field that requires environmental management. The purpose of this study is to propose an improved data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to analyze the performance of provincial industrial systems (ISs) from 2011 to 2020 in China. To comprehensively characterize the operational framework of ISs, this study proposes an improved meta-frontier network DEA model. Unlike the existing models, the one proposed in this study not only considers the technical heterogeneity of ISs, but also reflects the interaction between IS subsystems. The empirical analysis yields valuable research findings. First, the overall environmental performance of Chinese ISs is generally low, with an average performance of 0.50, showing a U-shaped trend during the study period. Furthermore, significant regional differences are observed in the environmental performance of Chinese ISs. Second, the average performance of the production subsystem is 0.75, while the average performance of the pollution control subsystem (PTS) is 0.44. The low performance of the PTS pulls down the overall performance of Chinese ISs. Third, the technological level of Chinese ISs is low, with about 50% improvement potential. Finally, targeted suggestions to promote the green development of ISs are proposed on the basis of the empirical results.

Keywords: industrial system; technological heterogeneity; interaction; DEA model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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