Evaluation of green growth efficiency of oil and gas resource-based cities in China

This study takes China's oil and gas resource-based cities as the research object and builds a green growth efficiency evaluation index system from the four dimensions of social economy, resources and environment, science and technology, and government policy. Based on the non-radial and non-angle SBM model combining with the Malmquist–Luenberger (ML) index model for undesired output, it measures the green growth efficiency of oil and gas resource-based cities in China from 2010 to 2017 from both static and dynamic perspectives. It also analyzes the changing trend and room for growth of the green growth level of oil and gas resource-based cities. The results show that: (1) Using the combined SBM and ML methods can scientifically evaluate the green growth efficiency of China's oil and gas resource-based cities; (2) The green growth level of China's oil and gas resource-based cities generally rose first in 2010–2017 and then showed the declining wave momentum. The green growth efficiency has a lot of room for improvement; (3) The green technology progress index (TC) shows a U-shaped changing trend, and however, the TC is greater than 0.7 and approaching to 1 between 2011 and 2017, indicating that green technology progress has a promoting effect on green growth efficiency; (4) Indicating green technological progress is the main factor for improving the green growth efficiency of oil and gas resource-based cities. Graphic abstract