Using Weighted Data Envelopment Analysis to Measure Occupational Safety and Healthy Economic Performance of Taiwan’s Industrial Sectors

Abstract

The socioeconomic costs of occupational accidents represent an important factor in the safety and healthy development of a country’s economy. Insurance payments (which cover workplace incidents, such as wounds or illness, disability and fatality) can be considered a proxy for the socioeconomic cost of occupational accidents. Occupational accidents in different industries cause important variations in these three socioeconomic costs—for example, in their frequency and severity. One of the most commonly used mathematical programming approaches that analyze the performance of inputs, economic outputs and occupational accidents is data envelopment analysis (DEA), which has also been used in recent years to estimate the relative performance related to occupational injuries. This study measures the safety and healthy economic performance of Taiwan’s 17 industrial sectors by incorporating the varying importance of the three socioeconomic costs of occupational accidents into a weighted DEA Model. The empirical results demonstrate that integrating the varying importance of the three socioeconomic costs of occupational accidents in the evaluation of safety and healthy economic performance is very important. To improve the occupational safety and healthy economic performance of Taiwan’s main industrial sectors, efforts should focus on reducing fatalities, which are very costly. These findings could help Taiwan’s policy makers effectively improve their safety and healthy economic performance, based on the specific context of each industry, especially the mining and quarrying industry.

Improving ecological monitoring system in the areas of oil and gas production development

“…The Excel program has a built-in ability to use for approximation of obtained dependencies some mathematical models, among other things, such models as linear ( . [17]. As well as there is a function that allows, quite successfully, predicting changes in the process in the short term, these possibilities have already been used by the authors in other investigations [18].…”

Analysis of the Correlation between Occupational Accidents and Economic Factors in China

“…There is an interdependent relationship between safety and economy, and safety cost is the link between safety and economy [5]. Based on this, Yeh [6] incorporated the economic cost of occupational accidents into the weighted data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to measure the safety and health economic performance of Taiwan's industrial sector. Wei's [7] research shows that socio-economic factors have a significant impact on occupational safety; the growth of socio-economic level can improve occupational safety, and occupational health and safety are related to the economic activities engaged in the country.…”