Sustainability Evaluation of Railways in China Using a Two-Stage Network DEA Model with Undesirable Outputs and Shared Resources

Abstract

This paper constructs an additive two-stage network DEA (data envelopment analysis) model with consideration of undesirable outputs and shared inputs. Following the triple bottom line standard of sustainability, we calculate both the overall and sub-stage sustainability performance of railway transportation in China from 2002 to 2013, from the aspects of economy, environment and society. The results show that the overall sustainability of China's railway presents a character of first declining, then rising and declining again. Moreover, the railway sustainability of China's eastern areas are much better than that of the western and central areas, and the gap has become much larger since 2009. As for the sub-stage efficiency, neither the production stage nor the service stage of the railway is efficient in sustainability, and the efficiency of the production stage is lower than that of service stage and plays a greater impact on the overall sustainability. Therefore, in order to improve the overall sustainability of China's railways, it is essential to improve the level of railway engineering construction and develop technological innovations in railway production.

Sustainability Assessment of Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry: A New Hybrid Model Using Combined Analytic Hierarchy Process and Two-Stage Additive Network Data Envelopment Analysis

“…Undesirable factors have been taken into account in measuring the efficiency of suppliers [24], eco-efficiency [25,26], and resource and environmental efficiency [15,27]. The literature has also presented DEA efficiency evaluation by considering undesirable factors, and undesirable factors can be regarded as inputs or undesired outputs in the DEA models [13,22,28]. Scholars have developed different techniques to deal with undesirable outputs in DEA [29].…”

“…This issue can be addressed by the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique, because DEA applies to problems with multiple inputs and multiple outputs [11], while also considering undesirable outputs. Thus, it can evaluate the sustainability performance more precisely [12,13].…”

“…In order to assess sustainable development, previous studies have developed the variations of DEA [12][13][14]. As stated above, the application of DEA provides a tool for the comprehensive assessment of the environmental impacts and operational performances of multiple DMUs (Decision Making Units).…”

Regional Differences and Spatial Aggregation of Sustainable Transport Efficiency: A Case Study of China

“…For example, Pauli and Yu-Feng (2010) evaluated the sustainability of inland waterways using comprehensive fuzzy evaluation method and explored the influencing factors of sustainable development of inland waterways [20,21]. Railway sustainability in china was evaluated to explore its impact on the development of Chinese society [22]. In summary, on the one hand, the aforementioned research on sustainable transport focused mainly on the sustainability of urban transport.…”

Sustainability Assessment of Refining Enterprises Using a DEA-Based Model

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