Research on Carbon Emission Efficiency and Its Improvement Path of China?s Provinces Based on SBM-ML Model and fsQCA Model

The realization of the "double-carbon" goal will contribute to the high-quality and sustainable development of China's economy and society, while the improvement of carbon emission efficiency in Chinese provinces will lay a solid foundation for the realization of the "double-carbon" goal. In this paper, 30 Chinese provinces are selected as research cases. MatLab software is applied to build the slacks-based measure Malmquist-Luenberger (SBM-ML) model to measure carbon efficiency. By the analysis of their carbon efficiency with the fuzzy qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method, this paper aims to find new ways to improve carbon emission efficiency. Among the data of all the provinces and municipalities, there are only four are greater than 1, revealing much room for improvement in Chinese carbon emission efficiency. The carbon emission efficiency of each province and municipality is synergistically influenced by five elements: environmental regulation, urbanization rate, marketization level, consumer price index, and government environmental expenditure. Different configurations of the five elements constitute four feasible ways to improve carbon emission efficiency. The total consistency level of 0.822277 indicates that the four paths are sufficient conditions for achieving high carbon emission efficiency. The conclusions of this paper are not only helpful in accurately grasping the carbon emission efficiency in Chinese provinces but also provide theoretical support and practical guidance for improving the carbon emission efficiency in China.