Integrated data envelopment analysis and cooperative game for evaluating energy efficiency of transportation sector: a case of Iran

Transportation sector with the consumption of 25% of energy play a major role in Iranian economy. This sector produces 27% of total undesirable greenhouse gases in Iran which has directly harmful effects on the environment. Hence, performance assessment of energy efficiency of transportation sector is one of the most important issues for policy makers. In this paper, energy efficiency of transportation sector of 20 provinces in Iran is evaluated based on data envelopment analysis (DEA)cooperative game approach. First, selected inputs and outputs are categorized into energy and non-energy inputs and desirable and undesirable outputs. Then, classical DEA model is applied to evaluate and rank the provinces. Since, the classical DEA model can't distinguish between efficient provinces, so, this paper ranks the provinces based on combination of cross-efficiency DEA and cooperative game approaches. In the cooperative game theory, each province is considered as a player and the suitable characteristic function is defined for players. Finally, by calculating the Shapley value for each player, the final ranks of transportation sectors in provinces are concluded. The results indicate that some smaller provinces have better energy efficiency in transportation sector in comparison with big provinces.