A non-radial DEA approach to measuring environmental performance

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has gained great popularity in environmental performance measurement because it can provide a synthetic standardized environmental performance index when pollutants are suitably incorporated into the traditional DEA framework. Past studies about the application of DEA to environmental performance measurement often follow the concept of radial efficiency measures. In this paper, we present a non-radial DEA approach to measuring environmental performance, which consists of a non-radial DEA-based model for multilateral environmental performance comparisons and a non-radial Malmquist environmental performance index for modeling the change of environmental performance over time. A case study of OECD countries using the proposed non-radial DEA approach is also presented. It is found that the environmental performance of OECD countries as a whole has been improved from 1995 to 1997. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.