Analysis of green total-factor productivity in China's regional metal industry: A meta-frontier approach

Nowadays, the metal industry has become an important source of China's energy consumption and environmental pollution. With the tightening of resources and environmental constraints and the calls for green development, transforming the development mode and improving green total-factor productivity (TFP) of China's metal industry become the only way to help China get out of the dual dilemmas of resources depletion and environmental degradation. By applying a meta-frontier approach, this paper investigates the sources of green TFP changes and its inefficiency of China's metal industry during 2000–2015, from regional and provincial perspectives. The results show that: (1) green TFP in China's metal industry increased by 11.52% annually. Technological progress is the most critical driving factor and the reduction of regional technology gap plays a certain role in promoting green TFP growth, while declines in scale efficiency and pure technical efficiency are two inhibitors; (2) the current green TFP of China's metal industry is relatively low and green TFP inefficiency mainly comes from three aspects, i.e., technology gap, scale inefficiency, and pure technical inefficiency; (3) Because the sources of green TFP inefficiency in metal industry and the potential for green TFP gains show distinct spatial characteristics, this paper takes a further step to formulate specific strategies for metal industries in each of China's provinces to improve their green TFPs, from three aspects of bridging the technology gap, adjusting industrial scale, and upgrading management level. •A meta-frontier DEA for green TFP measurement was developed.•Green TFP and its inefficiency were decomposed into three factors.•Green TFP of China's regional metal industry from 2000 to 2015 was analyzed.•Technological progress contributes the most to green TFP growth of this sector.•Green TFP and its inefficiency in China's metal industry show spatial characteristics.