Performance evaluation of Chinese port enterprises under significant environmental concerns: An extended DEA-based analysis

The rapid development of China’s port industry has caused numerous problems, among which the most significant is environmental pollution. A major goal for government and port enterprises alike is the achievement of both effective environmental protection and operational efficiency. Therefore, environmental factors should be considered when evaluating port efficiency. However, most of the available data envelopment analysis (DEA) models that have been used in previous studies enable each decision-making unit (DMU) to choose its favorite weight-combination with a rather careless approach. This may have caused some DMUs with very good economic indexes but very poor environmental indexes to be evaluated as fully efficient. This paper proposes a non-radial DEA preference model, based on the assumption of variable returns to scale (VRS) and the Directional Distance Function (DDF). The proposed model has been used to evaluate and analyze the efficiency of Chinese-listed port enterprises. The efficiency results showed the average efficiency to be low for all ports when environmental factors are considered. The regression results show that port assets, berth quantity, and the geographical location can significantly impact the environmental performance of Chinese port enterprises. This study also classified all ports into four categories, based on throughput and efficiency. Recommendations for the implementation for improvements of different environmental policies have been made for the individual ports in each category based on the actual situation of each port.