“…To properly solve the problem of resource allocation, many scholars have proposed approaches based on data envelopment analysis (DEA; e.g., Ding, Chen, Wu, & Wei, 2018;Du, Cook, Liang, & Zhu, 2014;Hadi-Vencheh, Foroughi, & Soleimani-damaneh, 2008;Lozano, Villa, & Brännlund, 2009;Shao, Bi, Yang, & Xia, 2018;Wu, Zhu, Chu, An, & Liang, 2016;Zhu, Wu, Li, & Xiong, 2017). DEA, which was first introduced by Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes (1978), is an effective nonparametric method to evaluate the efficiency of a set of decision-making units (DMUs) using multiple inputs to produce multiple outputs.…”