Environmental efficiency of Xiangjiang River in China: a data envelopment analysis cross-efficiency approach

Purpose Environmental performance becomes a key issue for the sustainable development. Recently, incremental information technology is adopted to collect environmental data and improve environmental performance. Previous environmental efficiency measures mainly focus on individual decision-making units (DMUs). Benefited from the information technology, this paper develops a new environmental efficiency measure to explore the implicit alliances among DMUs and applies it to Xiangjiang River. Design/methodology/approach This study formulates a new data envelopment analysis (DEA) environmental cross-efficiency measure that considers DMUs' alliances. Each DMUs' alliance is formulated by the DMUs who are supervised by the same manager. In cross-efficiency evaluation context, this paper adopts DMUs' alliances rather than individual DMUs to derive the environmental cross-efficiency measure considering undesirable outputs. Furthermore, the Tobit regression is conducted to analyze the influence of exogenous factors about the environmental cross-efficiency. Findings The findings show that (1) Chenzhou performs the best while Xiangtan performed the worst along Xiangjiang River. (2) The environmental efficiency of cities in Xiangjiang River is generally low. Increasing public budgetary expenditure can improve environmental efficiency of cities. (3) The larger the alliance size, the higher environmental efficiency. (4) The income level is negatively correlated with environmental efficiency, indicating that the economy is at the expense of the environment in Xiangjiang River. Originality/value This paper contributes to developing a new environmental DEA cross-efficiency measure considering DMUs' alliance, and combining DEA cross-efficiency and Tobit regression in environmental performance measurement of Xiangjiang River. This paper examines the exogenous factors that have influences on environmental efficiency of Xiangjiang River and derive policy implications to improve the sustainable operation.

Automated summary

Environmental performance is essential for sustainable development, and the use of incremental information technology to collect environmental data has become more widespread. This study introduces a new environmental efficiency measure that considers the alliances among decision-making units (DMUs) and applies it to the Xiangjiang River. The findings suggest that cities along the Xiangjiang River have generally low environmental efficiency, with Chenzhou performing the best and Xiangtan performing the worst. The study also reveals that increasing public budgetary expenditure can improve environmental efficiency, and larger alliance sizes are associated with higher environmental efficiency.