Abstract
Evaluating organizational efficiency involves measuring outcomes, such as revenues, value of goods and services produced, productivity, etc. However, a sustainable environment requires not only economic outcomes but also good quality of life in an area. Therefore, this research proposes a balanced assessment to evaluate environmental efficiency from the perspectives of urban ecology. We first adopted the bad output data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency of a metropolitan area followed by a biotope area factor to assess the ecological effectiveness of an area. Next, a censored regression model evaluates the relationship between environmental efficiency and biotope area factor. The empirical studies were conducted in Taichung, Taiwan. Empirical results suggest that typical efficiency evaluation of a metropolitan area is significantly overrated because it excludes external diseconomies such as CO2 emissions which have a profound impact on the environment. The regression results indicate that environmental efficiency and Taiwan biotope area factor are complementary and can be improved simultaneously while CO2 emission reduction is at present. We also show that current utilization of area for non-agriculture and human activities poses a negative impact on Taiwan biotope area factor.
Highlights
The pursuit of economic development, over-consumption, and global climate change has caused disruptive damages to the earth we live on and many others inhabit the same space with us
Empirical results suggest that typical efficiency evaluation of a metropolitan area is significantly overrated because it excludes external diseconomies such as CO2 emissions which have a profound impact on the environment
Our research logic follows that of Bai et al (2018) but we focus on urban ecology and biotope area factor instead of urbanization
Summary
The pursuit of economic development, over-consumption, and global climate change has caused disruptive damages to the earth we live on and many others inhabit the same space with us. Environmental issues like dengue fever, avian influenza, heat island effect, endocrine disrupting chemicals, etc. The effectiveness of these policies in improving urban ecology remains to be investigated. This study aims to investigate environmental efficiency and urban ecology from regional (metropolitan) level. In evaluating the ecological effectiveness of a metropolitan area in Taiwan, we consulted el-Baghdadi and Desha (2017) and the Berlin Biotope Area Factor (BAF) and established Taiwan biotope area factor (TBAF) as a proxy variable. We developed a statistical regression model to test the relevance between environmental efficiency and Taiwan biotope area factor. The main contribution of this research lies in the inclusive of external diseconomies and urban ecology in the evaluation of efficiency. We will review literature related to efficiency evaluation and urban ecology
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