Performance analysis of sustainable development goals: a multi-component additive network DEA approach

Burak Keskin, Joe Zhu and Anyu Yu

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2025, vol. 76, issue 9, 1749-1764

Abstract: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were created under 17 important headings announced by the United Nations (UN) in 2015. Three interconnected principles of sustainable development – Social, Environmental, and Economic- form the fundamental pillars of SDGs. No study has attempted to measure SDGs performances of countries in a single network model using these basic dimensions. To fill this gap, this study uses three-stage additive network Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to monitor the performance of 29 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 2015 to 2018. Our analysis reveals that the performance of OECD member countries in the environmental balance division is much lower than in the social progress and socio-economic divisions. Each country should identify its weaknesses in specific divisions and allocate more effort accordingly. We find none of the countries are overall efficient but a few are efficient in one or two divisions such as Latvia, Norway, Ireland, Slovenia, Finland, and USA. Based on the findings we recommend that the OECD countries should primarily focus on environmental issues to promote their overall performance in achieving SDGs. Our results underscore the notion that economic strength does not invariably equate to the achievement of SDGs as well.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01605682.2024.2443097

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