Environmental performance indicators of China's coal mining industry: A bootstrapping Malmquist index analysis

Abstract

This research develops a bootstrapped Malmquist environmental performance indicator for exploring the operating efficiency and variability of productivity estimates in China's coal mining industry, as it is the world's largest coal producer with massive undesirable outputs of degraded mining lands and carbon emissions. Taking these undesirable outputs into account, we set up a new value system, called the coal mining environmental performance indicator (CMEPI), by integrating the DEA-based Malmquist production index with a bootstrap method for the first time. We further investigate the bias-corrected CMEPI estimates and their decompositions in coal provinces during 2012–2017 at the regional, areal, and provincial levels and further reveal the characteristic and dynamic evolution of CMEPI estimates and their decompositions by using the Kernel density estimation. The results are as follows. The bias-corrected CMEPI estimates at the regional level as a whole increased by 5.20% during the period due to inferior technological change effects. Low-yield area with a smaller increase rate of technological change needs to be improved. Thus, decision-makers should urgently enhance efficiency change in places such as Hunan, Chongqing, and Jiangxi. Among the low-yield area, Jiangxi and Hubei must alter their path of technological change. Finally, greater attention should focus on promoting the catch-up effect for better regional synergy development. • Degraded coal mine lands and carbon emissions are considered as undesirable outputs. • A coal mining bootstrapped Malmquist environmental performance index is proposed. • Environmental performance change analysis in biased estimates is conducted. • The main factor causing performance transformation is technological change.