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The environmental-adjusted energy efficiency of China’s construction industry: a three-stage undesirable SBM-DEA model

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Abstract

The construction industry is a pillar industry of China’s national economy but its problems of high energy consumption, high pollution, and low energy efficiency are increasingly prominent. The study on the energy efficiency of the construction industry is of great significance for improving development quality and achieving the goal of energy saving and emission reduction. In this paper, a three-stage undesirable SBM-DEA model was employed to measure the energy efficiency in the construction industry during 2005-2016. The CO2 directly emitted by the construction industry and indirectly emitted in the production of building materials were used as the undesirable output and the three-stage framework was employed to analyze and eliminate the influence of external environment. The empirical results showed that low efficiency of management in the construction industry is an important factor leading to the low level of energy efficiency in China’s construction industry. For the energy efficiency value before and after adjustment, the “high-high” provinces have made full use of the superior external environment by their high management level, while the “high-low” provinces need to fully realize the potential in promoting energy efficiency of its external environment by improving its own management of the construction industry. On the contrary, the “low-high” provinces need to improve the external environment to ease its restrictions on the level of management in the construction industry. Environmental factors and management level should be considered simultaneously for different provinces to improve energy efficiency of the construction industry.

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Data Availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available from China National Bureau of Statistics.

Notes

  1. The data come from China Statistical Yearbook (2018), National Bureau of Statistics of China.

  2. The data come from China Statistical Yearbook (2018), National Bureau of Statistics of China.

  3. The data and figure come from China building energy consumption report (2018), China Association of Building Energy Efficiency.

  4. The data come from China building energy consumption report (2018), China Association of Building Energy Efficiency.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71673250); Zhejiang Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars (LR18G030003); Major Projects of the Key Research Base of Humanities under the Ministry of Education (No. 14JJD 790019); and Zhejiang Philosophy and Social Science Foundation (No. 18NDJC184YB).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, TaiLong Finance School, Center for Studies of Modern Business, Zhejiang Gongshang University, No. 18, Xuezheng Street, Jianggan District, Zhejiang, 310018, Hangzhou, China

    Yufeng Chen & Lihua Ma

  2. College of Business Administration, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, 100070, China

    Yufeng Chen

  3. Hangzhou College of Commerce, Hangzhou, 311599, China

    Lihua Ma

  4. School of Statistics and Mathematics, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, 310018, China

    Zhitao Zhu

Authors
  1. Yufeng Chen
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  2. Lihua Ma
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  3. Zhitao Zhu
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Contributions

Yufeng Chen: conceptualization; methodology; software; writing—reviewing and editing.

Lihua Ma: data curation; writing—original draft preparation; visualization.

Zhitao Zhu: formal analysis; writing—reviewing and editing.

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Correspondence to Yufeng Chen.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Chen, Y., Ma, L. & Zhu, Z. The environmental-adjusted energy efficiency of China’s construction industry: a three-stage undesirable SBM-DEA model. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 58442–58455 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14728-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14728-2

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