The Sustainability Efficiency Measurement in Network DEA with Slacks-based Measures

Environmental degradation and resource scarcity have encouraged sustainable resource utilization and environmental protection worldwide. Eco-efficiency has been considered as an indicator for sustainability analysis for the empirical relation in economic activities between environmental impact and cost. Most methods for evaluating eco-efficiencies of enterprises and industries involve subjective factors while determining weights of indicators. To address the issue, a slacks-based measure for the sustainability efficiency evaluation is proposed in this work by considering undesirable factors. The overall efficiency is derived as the weighted average of sub-system efficiencies. The study of the environmental sustainability performance of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries is included. The most influential factor that causes the low environmental sustainability scores of the whole system is identified.