Sustainability Assessment And Benchmarking Of Passenger Cars Using Data Envelopment Analysis

This thesis examines critical issues relating to global climate change,sustainability assessment,and improvement strategies in the passenger-car segment.This study’s subject is vital because conventional cars pollute heavily.Thus,improving passenger automobile sustainability contributes significantly to addressing global climate change.This study’s main aims are:1)Sustainability assessment of passenger cars,so the "better car" is greener and more powerful than others.2)Measuring technological differences to inform policy mixtures and policy interplay in strategies to improve the sustainability of passenger cars.3)Incorporating human risk-taking behavior using prospect theory into vehicle efficiency analysis.4)Conceptualizing a vehiclehealth system to assess vehicle use impacts on public health outcomes.5)Investigating the relative weight of industrial versus bio stages in the design decisions of automakers.The following research topics were addressed to examine the sustainability design and technology inequality of passenger cars:1)How does accounting for heterogeneity in vehicle industrial features affect the sustainability assessment of passenger cars?2)How does accounting for managerial decisions using the concepts of natural and managerial disposability impact overall vehicle eco-performance assessment?3)How does examining the marginal characteristics of the vehicle-production frontier provide insights for improving the sustainability of passenger cars?4)How could automakers’ risk attitudes and peer evaluation impact our understanding of industrial and bio-design stages in sustainable vehicle design?5)How do we assess vehicle use impacts on public health,and how does policy heterogeneity affect the vehicle-health system?6)What is the relative weight of the industrial and bio stages in the sustainable design decisions of automakers?7)How do we compare technology disparities across passenger cars,and how can both the efficiency Gini coefficient and the Theil Index,coupled with their decomposition,inform the sustainable improvement of passenger cars?8)Are there substantial empirical differences from using different network DEA models for the sustainability assessment of passenger cars?Methodologically,to evaluate the eco-performance of different passenger automobiles in the technological transformation process,Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA)is used.DEA environmental assessment includes desirable and undesirable outputs into one unified model as part of its dual environmental protection aims and optimizing desirable outcomes.The key findings of this study are as follows:First,most automakers were eco-friendly.From 2014 to 2021,passenger automobiles improved unified design efficiency by 4%.When group heterogeneity was considered,average vehicle emissions increased with the number of engine cylinders.The four-cylinder,continuously variable transmission also outperformed its equivalents in environmental friendliness.Second,managerial decisions impacted unified efficiency and technology inequality.There were substantial differences when comparing the unified efficiency scores for managerial and natural disposability.Third,the US vehicle-health system displayed significant state-level efficiency gaps.The relative weights of the vehicle use and health outcomes stages showed differing levels of state priorities.Fourth,human decision-making behavior impacted design efficiency in the network DEA Prospect Cross-efficiency(PCE)model.Empirical results were also affected by the choice between the network DEA and network DEA PCE models.Fifth,passenger cars’ technology inequality has increased,indicating a decline in climate change mitigation.Cross-group and within-group inequalities drove technology inequality.The overall efficiency Gini coefficient and the Theil index had significant within-group heterogeneity.Finally,the network DEA model showed significant disparities between the vehicle’s industrial and bio-design stages.Many passenger-car bio design stages outperformed industrial design stages.Finally,this study’s primary contribution is to provide valuable indicators,conclusions,and policy implications that will ultimately aid in resolving global climate change.