Construction and application of a comprehensive coordination and cross-efficiency sustainable development evaluation model: a case study of 31 provinces and regions in China

This paper proposes a comprehensive coordination and cross-efficiency evaluation model, aimed at tackling the problems evident in self-evaluation systems based on data envelopment assessment models, such as “developing strengths and avoiding weaknesses,” “ranking strengths and weaknesses completely,” extreme weights, and so on. Based on environmental sustainability, economic development sustainability, social well-being sustainability, and scientific and technological innovation sustainability these four dimensions, this paper proposed model contains 19 evaluation indicators, of which 11 are inputs and 8 are outputs. This model can overcome the problems of multiple solutions and the instabilities of the average cross-efficiency model by relaxing the average hypothesis of the general cross-efficiency model, thereby reducing the distance between the weighted input and the weighted output of the regional sustainable development system assessment. Taking the evaluation of the sustainable development efficiency of 31 provinces and regions in China as an example, the results showed that the evaluation function of the comprehensive coordination and cross-efficiency evaluation model constructed in this paper has potential in measuring regional sustainable development system.