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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Systems Engineering
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1565476
This article is part of the Research Topic Clean Energy and Low-carbon Transportation View all 7 articles
Research on the measurement and influencing factors of carbon emission efficiency in China's transportation sector based on EBM-Tobit model
Provisionally accepted
Weifang Song 1
Hao Zhang 2*- 1 Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, Anhui, China
- 2 Green Agriculture system, Huaibei, China
The international community has increasingly focused on reducing carbon emissions. The transportation sector is one of the key areas of carbon emissions in China. This study uses the superefficiency EBM-DEA model considering undesirable outputs to estimate the transportation sector carbon dioxide emission efficiency (TSCDEE) for 30 provinces in China from 2012-2022. The Tobit model is used to analyze the influencing factors of TSCDEE and the heterogeneous characteristics of the influencing factors across regions. The results indicate that the mean value of efficiency in Chinese provinces is 0.709. The overall TSCDEE in China shows a fluctuating upward trend, with the carbon emission efficiency higher in coastal areas but lower in the Southwest andNortheast. This study shows that factors such as freight turnover level, transportation infrastructure level, and technological progress have significant positive impacts on TSCDEE. In contrast, population mobility has a significant negative effect on TSCDEE. Based on the above results, this study proposes specific measures such as optimizing travel modes, improving infrastructure construction, increasing freight turnover, and promoting technological progress. This study also considers the differences between eight regions and offers targeted suggestions. These findings provide a reference for achieving green and low-carbon development in the transportation sector.With the use of MaxDEA 12.1 software, the TSCDEEs of 30 provinces in China between 2012 and 2022 are calculated as seen in Table 4. The spatiotemporal evolution maps for TSCDEE levels in 2012, 2017 and 2022 are drawn using ArcGIS 10.8 software.
Keywords: Transportation sector, Carbon emissions efficiency, Population mobility, Freight turnover, superefficiency EBM model
Received: 24 Jan 2025; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Song and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hao Zhang, Green Agriculture system, Huaibei, China
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