Efficiency measurement and productivity progress of regional green technology innovation in China: a comprehensive analytical framework

An effective innovation is a significant cause of competitive advantage. The evaluation of regional green technology innovation (GTI) performance in China has gained tremendous interest. In this paper, the GTI activities are split into two components: the green technology R&D (GTR) stage and the technology achievement transformation (TAT) stage. While doing so, we consider the time lag of the GTI process and managerial disposability of the undesirable output. The combination of the network epsilon-based measure (EBM) model and meta-frontier Malmquist-Luenberger (MML) index constitutes a comprehensive analytical framework for evaluating the regional GTI performance in China. This study's empirical results indicate that: (1) China's overall average efficiency of GTI (0.817) is between the efficiency of GTR (0.725) and the efficiency of TAT (0.929); (2) the average efficiencies in the GTR stage fluctuate considerably, with average efficiencies relatively high and constant in the TAT stage; (3) technological progress is the key element which contributes to improvements in the MML index of overall and sub-process GTI; and (4) from a national perspective, the MML index of the overall GTI varies from 0.980 to 1.128 each year, with an average annual growth of 2.8%.