Evaluation of green low-carbon innovation development efficiency: An improved two-stage non-cooperative DEA model

Scientific evaluation for the efficiency of green low-carbon innovative development (GLID) has great significance for promoting sustainable development (SD). The connotation and composition of GLID were first analyzed, and GLID was regarded as a two-stage complex system, in which multi-input coexists with multi-output. Based on the existing methods, an improved two-stage non-cooperative data envelopment analysis (ITNDEA) is further proposed to measure GLID efficiency by taking 30 Chinese provinces in 2020 as cases, and the results are finally compared with that by two-stage data envelopment analysis (TDEA) and two-stage non-cooperative data envelopment analysis (TNDEA). The results show that: (1) ITNDEA effectively avoids the efficiency being overestimated or underestimated and can obtain a more objective and reasonable efficiency value than TDEA and TNDEA; (2) The main reason of the low GLID efficiency is the imbalance between green technology innovation and carbon emission; (3) Each policy goal has a good effect on efficiency improvement, but the effect of the same policy goal has regional difference; (4) All regions/countries can improve SD level through key breakthrough mode and gradual breakthrough mode. The results provide the government with a new idea and method to formulate SD policies.