How to Evaluate the Efficiency of Green Economy and Its Regional Differences: Evidence from China

Abstract

Green economy is environmentally friendly economy, which is important for the sustainable economic development and environmental protection. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China, a three-stage super-efficient SBM-DEA (slack-based model-data envelopment analysis) model is constructed to evaluate the efficiency of green economy and analyze its regional differences. The results show that, first, the random error factor and external environmental conditions significantly affect the efficiency of green economy. Second, the green economic efficiency in China from 2010 to 2019 is stable and needs to be further improved. Third, through regional comparison, it is found that the green economy efficiency in eastern China is higher than those in central and western China and the green economy efficiency in northeast China is the lowest. Finally, green economy efficiency does not simply depend on the economic development, the regional differences of green economy efficiency results from the combined effects of different geographical resources endowment, different economic development characteristics, and different environmental protection policies in different regions of China. Based on the research findings, corresponding policy suggestions are put forward to improve the efficiency of green economy.