Energy consumption, air pollution, and public health in China: based on the Two-Stage Dynamic Undesirable DEA model

Abstract

The rapid development of China’s economy has largely relied on energy consumption, which has caused serious air pollution and affected public health, and economic development, energy consumption, air pollution, and public health have nowadays become the focus of academic attention. However, the previous literature failed to consider undesirable output when constructing the Dynamic Network DEA model to study the efficiencies of energy consumption, air pollution, and public health. As a result, past studies did not employ those three issues in a structure to effectively reflect and solve the problems. Therefore, this paper constructs the Two-Stage Dynamic Undesirable DEA model and puts energy consumption, air pollution, and public health into the same framework in order to fill the gap in the literature. Findings show that the production consumption efficiency stage is better than the health protection stage, and that the efficiency values of variables vary significantly in different regions. The efficiency of tumor and tuberculosis is the lowest, with oil consumption and birthrate efficiencies are the best, followed by coal, nitrogen oxide (NOx), and dust efficiencies. Coal efficiency exhibits a fluctuating downward trend, whereas the efficiencies of electricity, air pollutants, tuberculosis, and tumor tend to fluctuate upwards during the research period. In consideration of the varying performances of different regions in the two stages, we put forward suggestions based on these findings to improve the efficiencies of energy, environment, and public health in China.