Ecological efficiency evaluation of China’s port industries with imprecise data

• DOI: 10.1007/s12065-021-00638-2
• Publication Date: 2021-07-13T11:04:12Z
• Authors: Bao Jiang; Chen Yang; Qingqing Dong; Jian Li
• Keywords: Port (circuit theory); Ecological civilization; Ecological efficiency; Empirical Research; Harmony (Music); Ecological indicator

The new era requires port sectors cannot only promote economic development, but also need to achieve social harmony and ecological environment protection, which is in accordance with the initiative of ecological civilization construction proposed by the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Yet most performance-evaluated metrics related to social and environmental dimensions are qualitative not quantitative and hence not easy to be observed imprecisely, which makes it more complex to evaluate the ecological performance of port sectors. To address this issue, this paper introduces uncertainty theory to data envelopment analysis to deal with the imprecise data. Meanwhile, considering that the port industries usually reveal the characteristics of economies of scale and ignoring it would result in incomplete evaluation and wrong decision-making, this paper examines the ecological efficiency of port industries from the two perspectives with both technical efficiency and scale efficiency. Through the empirical analysis of China’s 17 port sectors, two major categories have emerged representing ecological efficiencies at different levels. That is, technically eco-efficient and eco-inefficient ports group as well as scale eco-efficient and eco-inefficient ports group. Moreover, the improvement radii of eco-inefficient port sectors are further calculated by models. The empirical implications can help policymakers to formulate and adjust policies on ecological civilization construction in China’s port industry.