Regional Green Technology Innovation Performance Evaluation Based On Improved Two-stage Network DEA Model

Green development is a new development model,which not only includes the greening degree of economic growth to reflect the production efficiency and resource use efficiency in economic growth,but also considers the carrying potential of the environment.At the same time,it includes the government's support degree in green development,such as government investment,management and governance.Since effective innovation activities are an important source of competitive advantages,regional green technology innovation performance evaluation has received extensive attention in China.The 13 th Five-Year Plan of the Chinese government puts forward the concept of green development,which calls for breaking through stringent energy and environmental constraints and transforming to a green development mode featuring low energy consumption,low emissions and high output.Facing the realistic demand of optimizing economic growth with environmental protection,green technology innovation has become the main melody of national or regional development.Only the progress of green technology innovation can achieve sustainable development in the real sense.The core of green growth is to improve the performance of resources and environment.Therefore,to study China's regional green technology innovation capability,we should not only consider the intensity of innovation input,but also consider the efficiency and productivity of green technology innovation under the condition of limited resources.In this paper,green technology innovation activities are divided into two stages: green technology research and development(R&D)stage and technological achievements transformation stage.In this process,we consider the time lag of green technology innovation process and the management disposal of undesired outputs.Under the assumption of production technology heterogeneity,this paper combines the Network Epsilon-Based Measure(NEBM)model with the Meta-Frontier Malmquist-Luenberger(MML)index,using the non-parametric meta-frontier theory as an analysis tool.A new analytical framework of regional green technology innovation performance evaluation in China is constructed from the perspective of efficiency evaluation and total factor productivity change.The main empirical findings of this paper show that:(1)The average overall efficiency of green technology innovation in Beijing,Jilin,Anhui,Zhejiang and Guangdong is effective,indicating that they have the best performance in green technology innovation activities.By contrast,the overall efficiency of green technology innovation in Shanxi and Heilongjiang is relatively low,which indicates that the green technology innovation activities in these two provinces are seriously inefficient.(2)Spearman rank correlation test showed that the overall efficiency of green technology innovation was related to the efficiency of the two stages.The main cause of low efficiency of green technology innovation process is the green technology R&D stage.China's provinces and autonomous regions have great potential to improve the efficiency in the green technology R&D stage,but the efficiency in the technological achievement transformation stage is also crucial.(3)The overall efficiency and sub-stage average efficiency in the eastern region are relatively high,while the overall efficiency and sub-stage average efficiency in central and western regions are relatively low.The average efficiency of green technology R&D stage fluctuates greatly,while the average efficiency of technological achievements transformation stage is relatively high and remains stable.China's overall average efficiency of green technology innovation(0.817)is between the efficiency of green technology R&D(0.725)and the efficiency of technological achievements transformation(0.929).(4)From 2011 to2015,both the overall efficiency and the stage efficiency of green technology innovation increased.From a national perspective,the MML index of the overall green technology innovation varies from 0.980 to 1.128 each year,with an average annual growth of 2.8%.Technological progress is the main factor that promotes the improvement of MML index in the overall and stage green technology innovation.Whether at the overall level or regional level,the MML index of green technology innovation shows an upward trend.