An empirical study on the influencing factors of transportation carbon efficiency: Evidences from fifteen countries

•Transportation carbon efficiency is redefined.•A new model—virtual frontier DEA is applied.•Fifteen countries’ transportation carbon efficiencies are evaluated.•The influencing degree of a structure factor is relatively small.

In this paper, transportation carbon efficiency is redefined, and its inputs and outputs are obtained from a literature review. Carbon, capital and labor are selected as the inputs, and passenger turnover volume and freight turnover volume are defined as the outputs. A new model, a virtual frontier DEA (virtual frontier Data Envelopment Analysis), is applied to evaluate transportation carbon efficiencies, and cases from 15 countries during the period of 2003–2010 are analyzed to verify the results. Next, a Tobit regression model is applied to identify the important influencing factors of transportation carbon efficiency. The results indicate that compared to the technology factor and management factor, the influencing degree of a structure factor is relatively small.