Study on eco-efficiency of industrial parks in China based on data envelopment analysis.
China's industrial parks have been playing a crucial role on driving regional economy development, but also been posing threats to local environment due to intensive resource consumption and waste emission. Chinese government facilitated eco-industrial development of industrial park, aiming to output more with less environmental burden. In our study, the eco-efficiency levels of 40 Chinese industrial parks in 2012 were assessed and ranked by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This paper applied indicators relevant to resource, economy, and environment from industrial parks which can well reflect the characteristics of eco-efficiency conforming to the concept of sustainability. This paper introduced how to adjust less sustainable parks to be more sustainable according to the DEA results. The roles of industrial added value per capita, industrial structure, environmental policy and development scale as influence factors of eco-efficiency were discussed. The results show that large differences exist in the eco-efficiency of different industrial parks. It is shown that 20% of the parks are relatively efficient. 47% of the study parks being inefficient in terms of scale efficiency show decreasing returns to scale. Policy implementations for the management of industrial parks were also discussed based on the results.
Key Laboratory of Eco-Industry of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China.
Yupeng
Y
Fan
Key Laboratory of Eco-Industry of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China.
Bingyang
B
Bai
Key Laboratory of Eco-Industry of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China. Electronic address: qiaoqi@craes.org.cn.
Qi
Q
Qiao
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China.
Peng
P
Kang
Key Laboratory of Eco-Industry of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China.
Yue
Y
Zhang
Key Laboratory of Eco-Industry of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China.
Jing
J
Guo
D002681:China; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D058735:Environmental Policy; D007221:Industry
China; Data envelopment analysis; Eco-efficiency; Eco-industrial development; Industrial parks; Policy making