Abstract
Coal mining is one of the highest-risk industries in China. Accident deaths in coal mines attract intense concern every year. This is the first attempt to measure production efficiency of coal mines with consideration of accident deaths. A combined directional distance function and slacks-based model is proposed to assess production and safety efficiency across 18 coal-mining provinces in China. Results showed that the average total factor humanitarian-production efficiency is poor, with nearly half of production potential unexploited. Safety efficiency is also low, and half of the deaths would be avoided if all coal enterprises operated at fully efficient levels. The directional contribution analysis pointed out that southern provinces should pay more attention to accident deaths than northern ones, while the importance of reducing accident death in efficiency promotion declined for nearly all provinces, which creates a tradeoff between safety and efficiency for enterprises and regulators. The results of this study showed that the safety situation of coal mines is not as optimistic as the official data suggest. Effective prevention mechanisms are urgently needed to prevent disastrous accidents in coal mines in China.
Song, M., Wang, J., Zhao, J., .Baležentis, T., Shen, Z. 2020. Production and safety efficiency evaluation in Chinese coal mines: accident deaths as undesirable output. Annals of Operations Research,291: 827-845; eISSN 1572-9338; Print ISSN 0254-5330; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-018-2804-4; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-018-2804-4; [ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide; Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) Journal Quality List; CNKI; Current Contents/Engineering, Computing and Technology; DBLP; Dimensions; EBSCO Academic Search; EBSCO Applied Science & Technology Source; EBSCO Business Source; EBSCO Computer Science Index; EBSCO Computers & Applied Sciences Complete; EBSCO Discovery Service; EBSCO Engineering Source; EBSCO STM Source; ECONIS; Gale; Google Scholar; INSPEC; Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China; Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JST); Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition; Mathematical Reviews; Naver; OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service; ProQuest ABI/INFORM; ProQuest Advanced Technologies & Aerospace Database; ProQuest Business Premium Collection; ProQuest Central; ProQuest Civil Engineering Abstracts; ProQuest Computer Science; ProQuest Engineering; ProQuest Materials Business File; ProQuest Materials Science and Engineering Database; ProQuest Mechanical and Transportation Engineering Abstracts; ProQuest Pharma Collection; ProQuest SciTech Premium Collection; ProQuest Science Database; ProQuest Technology Collection; ProQuest-ExLibris Primo; ProQuest-ExLibris Summon; Psyndex; Research Papers in Economics (RePEc); SCImago; SCOPUS; Science Citation Index; Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch); UGC-CARE List (India); zbMATH].