Abstract
The bias of technological progress, particularly relating to energy saving and carbon emissions reduction, plays a significant role in the sustainable development of transportation, and has not yet received sufficient attention. The objectives of this paper were to examine the bias of technological change (BTC), input-biased technological change (IBTC), and output-biased technological change (OBTC), and their influencing factors in the sustainable development of China’s regional transportation industry from 2005 to 2017. A slack-based measure (SBM) Malmquist productivity index was adopted to measure the BTC, IBTC, and OBTC by decomposing green total factor productivity. The results revealed that: (1) Continuous technological bias progress and input-biased technological progress existed in China’s transportation development from 2005 to 2017, making an important contribution to green total factor productivity. The output-biased technological change was close to 1, indicating a slight impact on the sustainable development of the transportation industry; (2) The bias of technological progress in eastern regions was slightly greater than that in central regions, and obviously greater than that in western regions. Moreover, different provinces experienced different types of technological bias change, with four major types observed during the research period; (3) The input-biased technology of a majority of provinces tended to invest more capital relative to labor, using more capital comparing to energy, and consume more energy relative to labor, while the output-biased technology of most provinces tended to produce desirable outputs (value added in transportation) and reduce the byproduct of CO2 relatively; (4) Average years of education, green patents in transportation, industrial scale, and local government fiscal expenditure in transportation significantly contributed to promoting the bias of technological progress, which was inhibited by the R&D investment. This study provides further insight into the improvement of sustainable development for China’s transportation, thereby helping to guide the government to promote green-biased technological progress and optimize the allocation of resources.
Highlights
As a basic sector of the economy, the transportation industry plays an active role in current society [1], and is associated with regional economic development, quality of people’s lives, and social welfare [2,3]
It was found that technological change was the major source of the degeneration of green TFP compared to efficiency change, with a contribution of 89.90% to total green productivity degeneration
According to the analysis above, we found that the value of OBTC was close to 1, which implies that those policies have played a positive role in promoting the reduction of CO2, the degree of the effect has been slight, suggesting that regional governments still need to strengthen the treatment of carbon emissions in transportation
Summary
As a basic sector of the economy, the transportation industry plays an active role in current society [1], and is associated with regional economic development, quality of people’s lives, and social welfare [2,3]. Due to fossil fuel consumption and exhaust emissions of vehicles such as cars and aircraft, this sector has become a significant contributor to overall carbon emissions, accounting for approximately one quarter of total energy-related CO2 emissions globally [4]. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that the proportion of global energy consumption accounted for by transportation will increase to 53% and 80% in 2030 and 2050, respectively [5], indicating that CO2 emissions will continually increase for the foreseeable future. Due to the high energy intensity of this sector, transportation is the second-largest contributor to national carbon emissions, accounting for 18.9% [8]. Given the importance of this sector to the economy, it is worth noting that more attention should be paid to the overall sustainable development of the transportation industry, rather than focusing only on the reduction of CO2 emissions
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