A novel cooperative game network DEA model for marine circular economy performance evaluation of China

Abstract This paper proposes a novel cooperative game network DEA model for evaluating marine circular economy (MCE) performance. The proposed model considers the bidirectional link between the economic production (EP) and environmental treatment (ET) subsystems within the MCE system. Then, the cooperative game strategy between subsystems is modeled by maximizing the factor inefficiency both of subsystems into the model’s measurement from a centralized control perspective. The evaluation results of China’s regional MCE performances over 2006–2015 show that while most coastal areas have a better efficiency score for the EP system, their performance of the ET system is worse and leads to poor MCE performances. In addition, converge analysis indicates that there exists β converge of efficiency difference across coastal regions in the long term. Furthermore, the efficiency decomposition reveals that many inefficient environmental treatment inputs contribute to the worse performance of the ET system. Based on the above findings, several specific policy implications for the existing problems are provided to promote China’s MCE.