Evaluating the efficiency of green economic production and environmental pollution control in China

Resource constraints and environmental pollution are common problems that have long plagued sustainable development, and enhancing the efficiency of green development is the key to cracking the problems. Previous studies have not jointly examined the green economic production efficiency and environmental pollution control efficiency of industrial and service sectors, to fill this research gap, this paper use the constructed meta-frontier, dynamic network Super-SBM (slacks-based measure) model to evaluate the environmental efficiency in China's 30 provinces and 107 cities. The results reveal that, (1) the green production efficiency of industrial and service sectors showed a fluctuating downward trend, and the pollution control efficiency improved first and then decreased. The overall environmental efficiency of both sectors is low, indicating a strong potential for improvement of the green development in China. (2) The overall environmental efficiency of industrial and service sectors has obvious regional heterogeneity, and which decreases as the weight of treatment stage increases. Additionly, the overall environmental efficiency of industry is greater than that of service industry. (3) The input inefficiency of the production stage and output inefficiency of the treatment stage are the main sources of inefficiency for the industry and service industry. [Display omitted] •This paper construct a meta-frontier, dynamic network Super-SBM model.•We analyze historical efficiency of GEP and EPC in industrial and service sectors.•Two sectors's efficiency has not been significantly improved from 1991 to 2020.•There is sectoral, regional and stage heterogeneity in efficiency.•“High input of production” and “low output of control” hinder effectiveness.