School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, People's Republic of China.
School of Economics and Management, Hefei University, Hefei, Anhui, 230601, People's Republic of China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Jun;29(26):39665-39683. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-18751-9. Epub 2022 Feb 2.
In this study, we propose average environmental efficiency, a more comprehensive, fair, comparable, and robust environmental efficiency measurement considering all projection directions to the efficient frontier, and then it is used to evaluate the environmental efficiency of Chinese provinces from 2006 to 2017. Furthermore, we investigate the most influential factors of regional environmental efficiency via a feasible generalized least squares regression approach. The empirical results show that only nine Chinese provinces have average environmental efficiency greater than the national average, implying that two-thirds of the provinces still have much room for improvement. Additionally, environmental efficiency disparities exist between provinces and between four larger geographical areas. The east area achieved the best environmental efficiency over the studied period, better than the whole country, followed in order by the west area, central area, and northeast area. Moreover, we find that the energy consumption structure, government intervention, and economic openness significantly and negatively influence regional environmental efficiency. Finally, we provide policy implications in terms of energy consumption structure optimization, government supervision, and foreign investment introduction while considering the local conditions in different provinces.
在这项研究中，我们提出了平均环境效率，这是一种更全面、公平、可比和稳健的环境效率衡量方法，考虑了所有投影到有效前沿的方向，然后我们使用它来评估 2006 年至 2017 年中国各省份的环境效率。此外，我们通过可行的广义最小二乘回归方法研究了区域环境效率的最具影响力的因素。实证结果表明，只有九个中国省份的平均环境效率大于全国平均水平，这意味着三分之二的省份仍有很大的改进空间。此外，各省之间以及四大地理区域之间存在环境效率差距。东部地区在研究期间实现了最佳的环境效率，优于全国平均水平，其次是西部地区、中部地区和东北地区。此外，我们发现能源消费结构、政府干预和经济开放度对区域环境效率有显著的负向影响。最后，我们根据不同省份的具体情况，从能源消费结构优化、政府监管和引进外资等方面提出了政策建议。
