An indicator approach to industrial sustainability assessment: The case of China's Capital Economic Circle

Abstract

Abstract While industrial sector has long been the economic engine of China's Capital Economic Circle (CEC) including Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei province, the consequences of its rapid expansion such as environmental degradation and social concerns are attracting exceptional attention. In recent years, policies and measures are largely applied to industrial sector of the CEC to find out a sustainable pathway. However, the sustainable development performance is lacking in scientific evaluation. To comprehensively understand the status quo of industrial performance under the pressure of climate change adaptation and mitigation, this study establishes an evaluation framework of sustainable performance for industrial sector of the CEC, synthesizing the economic, environmental and social pillars. Particularly, we use global principal component analysis (GPCA), a dynamic multi-criteria decision making model, to assess the progress of industrial performance in each region from a time series perspective. We find that industrial sectors in all three regions show good trends of sustainable development during 2009–2015. Among them, the industrial sector of Tianjin performed the best and maintained the best improving status because of its positive performance on innovation, employees' benefits, and economic structure. The industrial sector in Beijing had medium performance but it had outstanding advantages on social dimension for its high proportion of R&D employment with high income level. Hebei's industrial sector performed the worst for its relatively lower energy efficiency and heavy industry-based economic structure. The innovation-driven development mode in Beijing and Tianjin provides a direction for Hebei's industrial sectors.