Special District Libraries and Operating Costs: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with Discretionary and Non-Discretionary Inputs

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to assess the technical efficiency of special district libraries in the United States with respect to three cost-related outputs: operating cost per hour, program costs per visit, and program costs per attendance. A set of discretionary and non-discretionary inputs were used to obtain the technical efficiency scores of 999 special district libraries. The DEA input-oriented analysis shows that 30% of the libraries were technically efficient with respect to the use of the inputs to achieve their level of operating costs in 2015. The DEA analysis also shows that inefficient libraries need to make proportional reductions in the level of discretionary inputs to become technically efficient.