Measuring Environmental and Economic Performance of Air Pollution Control for Province-Level Areas in China

This paper proposes an improved three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to measure the environmental-economic efficiency (EEE) of air pollution control for 30 province-level areas of China during the period of 2012 to 2016. In this model, capital, labor, and total energy consumption are the three inputs, while gross domestic product (GDP) and waste gas emissions represent the desirable and undesirable outputs, respectively. This model allows the weights of economic growth and environmental protection to be adjusted as needed by policymakers; the model is adopted to evaluate the effects of government measures on environmental protection and economic growth. Ultimately, the effects from environmental factors and statistical noise are excluded from the EEEs of local governments and the managerial efficiencies are calculated. The results simultaneously reflect the local performance of air pollution control and economic development, which can be used to clarify the ranking of provinces nationwide.