Sustainability performance for China's transportation industry under the environmental regulation

Traffic and transportation industry is a carbon-intensive industry in China. The implementation of environmental regulation is of important practical significance. Nowadays, literatures lack of quantitative analysis on transport industry's sustainability performance under the environmental regulation. By using a directional distance function, this paper aims to investigate the effect of environmental regulation on this industry. Furthermore, this paper measures its green total factor productivity under the general intensity of regulation and strict regulation from 2000 to 2010. Results show that the economic growth mode in transportation industry is still the extensive mode, while there is great potential for the improvement of energy saving and production.