Apply the DEA to analysis the sustainability of shrinking areas — Case studies of Southern Taiwan

Sustainable development is the most important target that people are trying to approach to face the issue of climate change. Also, shrinking city (population decline) can be considered as one of the most critical phenomenon of contemporary urban societies. Thus, this research intended to reveal the relationship between the shrinking cities and their sustainable performance. This research provided an innovation method to review the shrinking cities by data envelopment analysis (DEA), and the correlations test and the Kruskal-Wallis test approved that most townships/district that had lower efficiency are also the population decline areas.