Investigating multi-regional cross-industrial linkage based on sustainability assessment and sensitivity analysis: A case of construction industry in China

Construction industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries, and its output value plays a vital role in economic growth of China. It's expected to be valuable to investigate its sustainability and improvement paths under the background of environment-friendly and conservation-minded development. At first, we adopted a non-radial data envelopment analysis incorporating both natural and managerial disposability to study regional differences regards comprehensive performance of construction industry in China. And then, a multi-regional cross-industrial linkage analysis was carried out embodiment in the sustainable assessment and sensitivity analysis based on the Ghosh model. Accordingly, we intended to provide a systematic relational network focusing on the key provinces and industries which play important roles in improving the comprehensive performance of construction industry. In detail, Hebei, Shanghai, Hubei, Yunnan and Gansu were found to be the most inefficient on account of the results from sustainable assessment in 2007. In accordance with the results from the sensitivity analysis based on the regional input-output model, the adjustment of rationing in mining & processing of ores, manufacture of non-metallic mineral products and smelting & pressing of metals will effectively increase the comprehensive performance of construction industry in the above-mentioned provinces. Emphatically, the method integration used in this study, which could also be applied in other sectors and countries, is a new try to study an industry from the multi-regional and cross-industrial perspective. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.