Dynamic Differences and Factors Affecting Regional Environmental Performance in China: Variable Return to Scale and Technology Heterogeneity

This paper relaxes the assumptions of constant returns to scale and technology similarity. We present a non-radical regional potential outputs measurement model based on the assumptions of variable returns to scale and technology heterogeneity. The proposed model can not only measure the value of environmental performance, but also decompose potential efficiency and analyze influencing factors. We combine the proposed model with a meta-frontier framework to measure dynamic changes in environmental performance and recognize the effectiveness of energy conservation and emission reduction policy. Empirical results show that average environmental performance of low energy consumption and low emission regions is greater than that of other regions,and increasing factors allocation efficiency promotes improvement in regional environmental performance. High and medium energy consumption and emission regions perform worse than low energy consumption and emission regions because the technology of high and medium regions lags behind low energy consumption and emission regions. Factors allocation efficiency was improved and environmental technology has been innovated to some extent among most provinces in China. Although environmental technology in low energy consumption and emission regions has been significantly improved, the environmental technology gap widens among low, medium and high energy consumption and emission regions. Therefore, the average environmental performance of China is negative growth over the study period. However, environmental performance is improved greatly when an improved energy conservation and emission reduction policy is implemented. This indicates that the environmental policy has a positive effect on environmental performance.