Applying non-radial DEA on undesirable outputs for sustainability

Abstract

Enterprises recognize sustainability as an important issue in management. Unfortunately, there are problems of increasing desirable outputs and decreasing undesirable outputs in sustainability measurement. In the past, Hwang et al. developed a radial DEA model that simultaneously evaluated decrease of undesirable outputs and increase of desire outputs with a focus on identifying inefficiency of automobile industry. Practically, a radial DEA model doesn't reflect all efficiency/inefficiency of a decision-making unit(DMU) with numerous inputs and outputs, whereas a non-radial DEA model does. To solve the tie above, we apply non-radial data envelopment analysis(DEA) on undesirable outputs for sustainability in this paper. Our applied non-radial DEA provides measurement to yield the livelihood-efficiency such as the efficiencies number of violent crimes or the eco-efficiency such as the efficiencies of carbon emissions, gas emissions, water pollution and solid wastes, and further improving efficiencies while minimizing the undesirable outputs in sustainability.