An estimation of returns to scale of airport airsides under multiple optimal solutions in DEA

The returns to scale (RTS) nature of 37 Chinese airport airsides are investigated in this paper. Multiple optimal solutions in DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) models may lead to error RTS estimation. To address this problem, we use the (Zhu and Shen, 1995) RTS method. The empirical study shows that all those airsides with two runways operate under decreasing RTS and those airsides with only one runway either operate in the area of increasing RTS or in the area of constant RTS.