The drivers of China’s regional green productivity, 1999–2013

•China’s green total-factor productivity (TFP) and its components are investigated.•Three kinds of non-radial measures are used.•Technological progress is the critical driving force of China’s green TFP. This paper investigates the tendencies of China’s green total-factor productivity (TFP) and its factors for regional green growth. We strengthen the robustness by constructing three different DEA models. For this purpose, we develop and compare three new measures, i.e. the biennial weight modified Russell model (BWMRM), the biennial bounded adjusted model (BBAM), and the biennial range adjusted model (BRAM). We further propose a related Luenberger productivity indicator and decompose green growth with two different methods, namely, the tradition-decomposition view (TDV) and the factors-decomposition view (FDV). We apply the proposed methodology to China’s provincial data between 1999 and 2013. The main findings are as follows: First, China’s green productivity has exhibited measurable improvements between 1999 and 2013, and technological progress is the main driving force, while efficiency deterioration has a weak negative effect. Second, the energy conservation and emission reduction performance are also the critical drivers of green productivity. Specifically, the performance of emission reduction is larger than that of energy conservation. Third, energy conservation and emission reduction improve the green productivity through promoting technical progress, which supports the Porter hypothesis. Fourth, the East and Central areas achieved win-win situation and the effect attained in the East is more remarkable, while the West encountered the “double deterioration” effect.