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 pro-posed 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.