Total-factor energy efficiency change of the road transportation industry in China: A stochastic frontier approach

Abstract

The mismatch between the supply and consumption of energy indicates that it is important to promote energy efficiency in the road transportation industry which is high in energy consumption. This paper employs a stochastic frontier approach to measure the total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) change of the road transportation industry in China. Then, a novel two-dimensional matrix is used to illustrate the energy efficiency of the road transportation industry in China’s eight economic areas. The combination of these approaches leads to the following conclusions: (a) The annual TFEE growth rate of Chinese road transportation systems has slowed down in recent years, but the average annual TFEE growth has reached 17.34%. (b) Both technological change and scale efficiency change boost the TFEE growth, and technical efficiency change hinders the TFEE growth. (c) Almost all regional road transportation industry TFEE scores increased during the study period, but the growth rates were significantly higher in the Northern Coastal and Eastern Coastal areas than in other areas. Finally, this paper suggests increasing investment in highways to expand the operation scale, developing advanced technology for high-quality development of the industry, and carefully designing measures to improve transportation technical efficiency according to regional economic development orientations.