Social Sustainability Assessment across Provinces in China: An Analysis of Combining Intermediate Approach with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Window Analysis

Abstract

There are two categories (i.e., radial and non-radial category) in conventional DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis). Recently, intermediate approach was put forward as a new third category. Intermediate approach is a newly proposed approach and there are quite limited related studies. This study contributes to the DEA studies by putting forward an analytical framework of combining intermediate approach and DEA window analysis along with the concepts of natural and managerial disposability. Such combination is quite meaningful and this new approach has three important features. To the best of our knowledge, such type of research has never been investigated by the existing studies. As an application, this approach is used to evaluate the performance of provinces in China from 2007 to 2014. Furthermore, this study develops a series of performance indices from different perspectives. This study identifies the three important findings. Firstly, eco-technology advancements can achieve economic prosperity and environmental protection simultaneously, and thus should become a new direction of climate policies. Secondly, considerable differences exist in a series of indices that evaluates the performance of various provinces and pollutants from different respective. Then, sufficient attention should be given to the provinces and the pollutants with poor performance. Finally, the Chinese government should promote efficiency improvement by "catching up" for provinces with poor performance in the short term. In addition, the central government should reduce regional disparity in order to promote the social sustainability in the long term.

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