Research on Pathways to Improve Carbon Emission Efficiency of Chinese Airlines

Liukun Zhang and Jiani Zhao ()
Additional contact information
Liukun Zhang: School of Air Transport, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai 201620, China
Jiani Zhao: School of Air Transport, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai 201620, China

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 15, 1-17

Abstract: As an energy-intensive industry, the aviation sector’s carbon emissions have drawn significant attention. Against the backdrop of the “dual carbon” goals, how to enhance the carbon emission efficiency of airlines has become an urgent issue to be addressed for both industry development and low-carbon targets. This paper constructs an evaluation system for the carbon emission efficiency of airlines and uses the SBM-DDF model under the global production possibility set, combined with the bootstrap-DEA method, to calculate the efficiency values. On this basis, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method is employed to analyze the synergistic effects of multiple influencing factors in three dimensions: economic benefits, transportation benefits, and energy consumption on improving carbon emission efficiency. The research findings reveal that, first, a single influencing factor does not constitute a necessary condition for achieving high carbon emission efficiency; second, there are four combinations that enhance carbon emission efficiency: “load volume-driven type”, “scale revenue-driven type”, “high ticket price + technology-driven type”, and “passenger and cargo synergy mixed type”. These discoveries are of great significance for promoting the construction of a carbon emission efficiency system by Chinese airlines and achieving high-quality development in the aviation industry.

Keywords: carbon emission efficiency; influencing factors; fs-QCA; configurational pathways (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/15/6826/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/15/6826/ (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:17:y:2025:i:15:p:6826-:d:1711164

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 ().