Provincial performance assessment of neighborhood regeneration based on a super-SBM model and the Malmquist indices: A China study

Neighborhood regeneration (NR) has been recognized as a sound approach to deal with urban decay, improve citizens’ well-beings, and promote urban sustainability. Promoting NR and improving its performance is a global topic. In China, massive subsidies have been provided to stimulate NR projects. However, whether these subsidies effectively contribute to NR implementation by considering sustainability indicators has not been systematically evaluated. This paper aims to assess provincial NR performance in China by combining the Super-slack-based measure (Super-SBM) model and the Malmquist indices (MI). The study reveals that the NR efficiency in China was not high. The slow movement of frontier shift (FS) and the shortfall in expected social and environmental outputs are likely to be the main reasons for NR inefficiency. Further analysis shows there are considerable efficiency disparities between different regions. The performance evaluation results can contribute to providing guidance for policymakers on future NR planning and sustainable development. The mixed-methods that integrate NR characteristics proposed in this paper will also provide insights for future urban-related performance assessments.