Reassessment of the efficiency of China's industrial circular economy considering quality of life: a meta recycle SBM dynamic under exogenous model

Improving industrial circular economy efficiency (ICEE) is an inevitable goal to realize industrial transformation and upgrading, and it is also an essential requirement for following a new path of industrialization. Few studies discuss quality of life (QoL) under industrial production, the circular economy, and environmental pollution and thus fail to recognize how QoL affects the development of the industrial circular economy. Most existing studies use the traditional DEA model for calculation, ignoring that the industrial circular economy system is complex and composed of a two-way closed loop including pollution control and resource recovery. Therefore, this research innovatively takes QoL as an exogenous variable, decomposes ICEE into two subsystems of industrial production efficiency and industrial circular efficiency, and constructs a new meta SBM dynamic circulation model that considers exogenous variables. We then re-evaluate ICEE and its stage efficiencies (industrial production efficiency and industrial circular efficiency) for 30 provinces in China after adding QoL. The study finds that ignoring QoL can lead to serious errors in ICEE. China's overall ICEE is not high, and except for the nine provinces of Shanxi, Shandong, and Tianjin, which have reached the efficiency frontier, the ICEE of the remaining 21 provinces has room for improvement to varying degrees. From 2015 to 2020, the overall performance of ICEE, industrial production efficiency, and industrial cycle efficiency in terms of time series show an upward trend. The industrial production efficiency value is generally better than the industrial cycle efficiency value, contributing to overall efficiency, while industrial cycle efficiency drags down overall efficiency. The geographical distribution of ICEE exhibits clear stages. In 2015 and 2018-2020, the performance is east > central > west. From 2016 to 2017, the efficiency of the industrial circular economy is west > east > central, and the west region surpasses the east and central regions, achieving a qualitative leap. During the study period, industrial production efficiency presents a trend of east > west > central, and industrial circulation efficiency is distributed in a ladder shape of east > central > west. Regional differences in the efficiency of the industrial circular economy are obvious, but the gap between the three major regions is gradually narrowing.