Assessment and improvement analysis of economic production, water pollution, and sewage treatment efficiency in China

Abstract

With its rapid economic development in the last 40 years, China's environmental pollution has begun to seriously affect its citizens' lives as well as domestic business expansion. The problems of water pollution, increasing population, acceleration of urbanization, and strong GDP growth have made this critical issue increasingly more prominent. Recent related literature has mostly focused on economic production development and water pollution separately without systematically considering the relevant links between the former and sewage treatment capacity. Therefore, based on data of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2017, this paper uses a modified undesirable dynamic network Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) model to look into each province's economic production stage efficiency and sewage treatment stage efficiency. The research findings show big differences in input and output efficiencies for each region from 2011 to 2017 and a distinct mismatch between economic production stage efficiency and sewage treatment stage efficiency, with the former higher and the latter lower. Lastly, sewage treatment stage efficiency is a major drag on overall efficiency. Each province should thus follow the key indicators to improve efficiency according to local conditions.