The Environmental Assessment on Chinese Logistics Enterprises Based on Non-Radial DEA

Abstract

Under the new situation of economic development in China, the logistics industry is facing unbalanced development regarding economic and environmental performance. From the enterprise level, this study investigated the sustainability of Chinese logistics based on the environmental assessment data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, and measured the unified efficiency of a logistics company under two different production arrangement strategies. The empirical measurement provides several findings. First, logistics enterprises give higher priority to operational benefits than environmental performance. Second, under the operational priority of production arrangement, small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) unified efficiency is better than a large enterprise, and private enterprises’ unified efficiency is better than state-owned enterprises. Moreover, the empirical study has further proved that the sustainability development of Chinese logistics is still at the primary stage; when facing trade-offs in the sustainability context, logistics companies still prioritize operational performance first. Therefore, transforming corporate strategy into an environmental sustainable priority and realizing logistics sustainability still has a long way to go, which is the backbone of realizing balanced development of both the economy and environment.