Eco-efficiency evaluation for industrial parks with pollutant emissions with a nonconvex nonparametric technique

¹ School of Business, Central South University, Changsha 410083, P.R. China
² Hunan Data Industry Group Co., Ltd., Changsha 410035, P.R. China
³ School of Resources & Environment, Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha 410205, P.R. China
⁴ School of Management, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui 230009, P.R. China

^* Corresponding author: phd_pingwang@163.com

Received: 19 December 2023
Accepted: 24 March 2025

Abstract

As a cluster of industries where pollutants are generated during production activities, industrial parks bear responsibilities for both economic development and environmental protection. Scientific and objective eco-efficiency evaluation of industrial parks not only clarifies development goals but also promotes the achievement of those goals. However, most existing data envelopment analysis approaches assume the convex production technology, which does not accurately reflect the production systems in industrial parks. To address this, this paper proposes a model to evaluate eco-efficiency and identify benchmarks for industrial parks under natural and managerial disposability within the non-convex production possibility set. The rationality and superiority of the model proposed in this paper are verified by comparing its results with those of the classical model under weak disposability. The proposed method can clarify the current situation of green and sustainable development of industrial parks and provide scientific improvement targets for inefficient parks.