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Chinese Journal of Management Science ›› 2026, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (6): 356-368.doi: 10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2024.0626

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An Analysis of Inter-provincial Carbon Emission Efficiency and Its Influencing Factors in China: A Multi-period Cross-efficiency Approach

Zeshui Xu, Mei Chang, Xunjie Gou()   

  1. Business School,Sichuan University,Chengdu 610065,China
  • Received:2024-04-23 Revised:2024-08-08 Online:2026-06-25 Published:2026-05-22
  • Contact: Xunjie Gou E-mail:gouxunjie@scu.edu.cn

Abstract:

As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China is facing particularly severe pressure on carbon reduction. Improving the carbon emissions efficiency is an inevitable choice to obtain a win-win situation between promoting economic growth and reducing carbon emissions. Consequently, numerous scholars conduct extensive research on carbon emission efficiency and its influencing factors. Due to the unique advantages of data envelopment analysis (DEA) in measuring the efficiency of decision-making units (DMUs) with multiple inputs and outputs, a lot of DEA extension approaches are proposed to measure carbon emission efficiency. However, most of these methods either focus solely on comparability between DMU efficiencies or on comparability of efficiencies over time, with fewer addressing both aspects. This results in biased measurements of carbon emission efficiency across multiple time periods. To measure multi-period carbon emission efficiency scientifically and effectively, a multi-period cross-efficiency model with undesirable outputs is constructed to measure the carbon emission efficiency of 30 provinces in China from 2006 to 2021. Furthermore, recognizing the significant spatial spillover effect of inter-provincial carbon emission efficiency in China, a panel spatial lag model is employed to examine the impact of various factors, such as industrial structure change and technological innovation, on carbon emission efficiency. The results show that there are large inter-provincial differences in carbon emission efficiency of China’s provinces, which display a significant right skewed distribution from an overall perspective, that is, the carbon emission efficiency of most provinces is relatively low. From the regional perspective, the carbon emission efficiency in the eastern region of China is the highest, followed by the central and western regions, and the gap in carbon emission efficiency among the three regions is increasing year by year; In terms of dynamic evolution trend, the carbon emission efficiency of the whole country, the eastern and central regions showed a fluctuating upward trend during the sample period, while the western region showed a downward trend due to the impact of the rough mode in the western development. The spatial autocorrelation test shows that there is a significant positive spatial spillover effect on carbon emission efficiency. Factors such as industrial structure upgrading, technological innovation, population density and external development show a significant positive impact on carbon emission efficiency, whereas the energy consumption structure and production factor structure exhibit a significant negative impact on carbon emission efficiency. Therefore, China should make concerted efforts in industrial structure adjustment, energy structure optimization, technological innovation breakthroughs and regional cooperation to effectively promote a win-win situation for energy conservation and carbon reduction, as well as economic growth.

Key words: carbon emission efficiency, data envelopment analysis, multi-period cross-efficiency, spatial lag model

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