The impact of globalization on comprehensive environmental efficiency and its sub-stage efficiencies: An adjusted range adjusted measure network data envelopment analysis model approach

Globalization is a worldwide trend, and environmental governance requires global cooperation. There are environmental issues caused by globalization, such as "environmental justice" and "externalization of cost." However, several key questions remain about the impact of globalization on the environment. This article attempts to decompose the comprehensive environmental efficiency and analyze their inner relationship its determinants. This study adopts range adjusted measure network data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to measure the overall efficiency and decompose comprehensive efficiency into two stages and investigate the interrelationship among them, based on the data from 30 cities along the Yangtze River. This can reveal the "black box" of the DEA and the interrelationship between each stage. The panel quantile method is adopted to analyze the impact of influencing factors, especially globalization, on efficiency. This article creatively builds the in-depth openness index to measure the tendency of in-depth openness. The following findings are identified: (1) Among sub-stages, environmental governance efficiency plays a more significant role in comprehensive environmental efficiency. (2) Foreign direct investment, urbanization, and industrial structure negatively influence efficiency, while the degree of openness, per capita GDP, and population density are positive determinants. (3) With the decrease of the HUANG index, the impact of globalization on the local environment shifted from supporting the pollution halo hypothesis toward supporting the pollution haven hypothesis. (4) Sustainability with harmony between humans and nature is recommended and can be achieved. The result of this study can help policymakers to find an effective way to achieve sustainability and improve the environmental efficiency effectively.