A decentralized production approach to measure fuel performance of bus transportation systems

This paper presents a comprehensive measure of fuel performance, considering economic and environmental factors using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The study uses decentralized production approach, modeling two technology specifications, one with abatement and one without. The study focuses on the Indian public bus transport industry, treating carbon emissions as bad outputs with joint disposability alongside fossil fuels. Additionally, it examines fuel performance drivers through bootstrapped truncated regression. The findings reveal that maintenance practices and vehicle age negatively affect fuel performance, with the latter showing a non‐linear influence. As fuel prices rise, bus company managers increasingly adopt fuel‐saving practices.