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The mature stage of development of Green Building Rating Tools (GBRTs) is one of the factors that critically affect the development of green-building practices. A GBRT generally comprises an indicator system (IS) and a quantitative evaluation system (QES); for a given QES, the core component is the scoring method of terminal indicators (SMTIs). Given the predominant focus on the IS in the literature on GBRTs, the QES has not been studied as comprehensively, especially for the SMTIs. Hence, this study proposes a comparative analysis of the SMTIs between two GBRTs – the Evaluation Standard for Green Building (ESGB) and the “Ecology, Energy Saving, Waste Reduction, and Health” system (EEWH). This analysis not only elucidates the QES but also functions as a reference for the development of other GBRTs globally. Methodologically, eight types of SMTIs used in the ESGB or EEWH are categorized and defined. Besides, to examine the QESs, two indexes are proposed to compare the performances of the two GBRTs: the number of adopted SMTI types (N) and the utilization rate (UR) of SMTIs. Two findings are noteworthy. Firstly, two SMTIs, i.e. the Formula Scoring Method (FSM) and Direct Scoring Method (DSM), are respectively associated with the highest and the lowest levels of maturity. Additionally, the QESs of the ESGB and EEWH primarily depend on only one SMTI (DSM and FSM respectively) with the same UR (63.9%), leading to a poor SMTI balance in the both two QESs and to a higher QES maturity of EEWH than ESGB. For future studies, the QESs of other GBRTs can be examined based on the eight SMTIs and two indexes (N and UR) proposed herein.

This study addresses the difficulty in systematically and scientifically evaluating the comprehensive performance of low-carbon modified asphalt. Sixteen technical indexes were selected as evaluation indicators. The corresponding weight of each evaluation index was determined by the coefficient of variation method. The fundamental performance, environmental protection effect, and economic effect of low-carbon modified asphalt were analyzed systematically. A comprehensive performance evaluation system for low-carbon modified asphalt was established based on the efficacy coefficient method. Low-carbon modified asphalt using tourmaline anion powder was selected as an example for inspection. Its comprehensive performance was evaluated, and the optimal content of tourmaline anion powder was determined. The results showed that the comprehensive performance evaluation of low-carbon modified asphalt using tourmaline anion powder reflects well the actual situation, meaning that a comprehensive performance evaluation system for low-carbon modified asphalt based on the efficacy coefficient method is relatively reliable and useful. This study lays the foundation for the comprehensive performance evaluation and further application of low-carbon modified asphalt.

When Lithium-ion Batteries (LIBs) are claimed to be ‘green’, they should not only exhibit outstanding electrochemical performances but also have a relatively lower environmental impact and attractive prices and benefits. From this point of view, we establish a comprehensive LIB evaluation system based on a multi-layer index and provide a comprehensive method for evaluating battery performance. The assessment system considers three aspects: environmental impacts, economic parameters, and electrochemical performances, with several indicators for each aspect. We use the footprint family of indexes to characterise the environmental impact of the battery. We analyse the comprehensive performance and evaluate the size of the market competitiveness with quantitative comparisons of the scores for each battery. A comprehensive assessment system with eleven indicators relating to the three aspects is built. As the indicators have different dimensions and units, we use a calculation method called entropy weight to normalise and nondimensionalise the indices; thus, a comprehensive evaluation value for each sample battery could be achieved. To realise the assessment system with practical samples, we choose four kinds of cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries, including LiFePO4/C, LiFe0.98Mn0.02PO4/C, FeF3(H2O)3/C and LiMn2O4/C, as study objects, and the average values of the comprehensive evaluation indexes for the four battery samples are0.034, 0.041, −0.027, and 0.052, respectively. The lower the comprehensive evaluation value is, the better the performance of the product will be. The FeF3(H2O)3/C battery has the best performance when combining 1 kg of battery cathode material. The results reflect the advantages and disadvantages of different types of battery in terms of processing, cost and environmental performance. The establishment of a comprehensive evaluation system for lithium-ion batteries is not only conducive to the scientific evaluation and optimisation of the wide variety of battery materials that are currently available but also to discovering battery materials with more competitive market prospects. The application of this system is not limited to batteries.

Air environment and inbound tourism has intricate interactions so that exploring the relationship of coupling coordination between them is contributory to discover the mutual interaction mechanism. The study firstly constructs a correlation model and an aggregated evaluation system to illustrate the interaction mechanism between these two factors; secondly evaluates the development degrees of both air environment and inbound tourism in China with the combined methods of information entropy weight and the technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution; thirdly analyzes the spatial-temporal differences of the coupling coordination situations between air environment and inbound tourism with the coupling coordination model; fourthly predicts the coupling coordination status of the regions in China with the gray prediction GM(1,1) model. The results show that the development degrees of air environment are more fluctuated than the ones of inbound tourism in China. The coupling coordination statuses are mildly fluctuating and the gaps among regions gradually narrow, while in the next four years the trend will be different: the spatial variations among regions will increase. The contributions include illustrating the interaction mechanism between the two subsystems theoretically, constructing the evaluation system and processing cross-regional spatial-temporal comparisons of the coupling coordination statuses, and predicting the trend of the coordination statuses, which helps to the proposal of more effective and efficient countermeasures.

A comprehensive evaluation including residents’ physical, psychological and cultural perceptions of their community can better guiding initiatives to improve community construction. Landsenses ecology is an emerging discipline which emphasizes the combination of the environment and human’s subjective perceptions and provides a theoretical basis for the comprehensive assessment of the perceptions of community residents. In this study, a three-level evaluation system of residents’ perceptions was constructed based on landsenses ecology and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, including physical perceptions (1st level), psychological perceptions (2nd level), and cultural perceptions (3rd level). Additionally, a comprehensive perception index was established based on a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. By evaluating the residents’ perceptions of five typical communities in the city of Xiamen, China, it was found that the cultural perceptions of residents had significantly lower index scores than their physical and psychological perceptions, that is, the higher the perception level is, the more difficult it is to realize the residents’ demands. The results conform to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the proposed perception levels based on landsenses ecology and verify the rationality of the present method for evaluating the residents’ perceptions of their community. These findings could provide a scientific basis for community planning and management.

Current green productivity research focuses only on environmental green, which cannot fully cover the essence of green production. Based on the statistical data of the relevant yearbooks from 2008 to 2016, this study uses the correlation-fuzzy rough set and entropy weight method to quantify the green productivity related indicators and reconstructs the green productivity evaluation indicator system. The research results showed: 1) The green productivity evaluation indicator system included five first-level indicators and 13 s-level indicators. The contribution of the five first-level indicators to green productivity was divided into environmental quality indicators > ecological resources indicators > economic development indicators > healthy labor indicators > energy utilization indicators. This research has formed a brand new green productivity indicator evaluation system, which has important theoretical value and practical significance for the high-quality development of China’s economy. 2) This study calculates comprehensive value of the green productivity indicator was calculated according to the weight of each indicator and was divided into five levels: [0, 0.2) - very gray, [0.2, 0.4) - gray, [0.4, 0.6) - transition, [0.6, 0.8) - acceptable, [0.8, 1.0) - can be declared. 3) On the whole, from 2008 to 2016, China’s green productivity index was slowly increasing but did not break through 0.6, which meant the overall level was still at a transitional level and China’s green productivity level was not optimistic. Finally, this study proposes a green productivity improvement strategy of “healthy construction, environmental quality improvement, economic development, and efficient use of energy in a coordinated development” with a view to providing reference for green productivity related research.

Existing studies on firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) have mainly focused on specific behavior levels aimed at exchanging resources, and have not paid adequate attention to long-term social responsibility orientation and top-level institutional design level. To address this gap, the present study first builds an evaluation system of the green governance structure based on green ideas, values, strategy, and organization arrangement from the perspective of top-level institutional design, and creates a green governance structure index. Chinese listed companies in 2015–2017 are taken as examples to investigate the relationship between green governance structure level and corporate financial constraints. Through empirical analysis, this study finds that firms with better green governance structure face lower financing constraints. Taking into consideration the effect of ownership characteristics, the shareholding ratio of institutional investors and the degree of equity balance are both found to further strengthen the negative impact of green governance structure level on financing constraints. An extensive analysis revealed that regional economic development and law environment may promote the relationship between green governance structure and firms’ financial constraints. This novel paper enriches the existing theoretical studies on green governance, and it offers a new way for firms to gain financing support that has extensive theoretical and practical significance.

Rapid industrialization and urbanization have triggered severe PM2.5 pollution and induced serious health hazards and economic losses in densely populated regions. A substantial number of health-related economic loss assessment methods, which quantify economic losses caused by diverse health endpoints, have been applied. However, traditional models neglect pollutant distribution and optimization of distribution parameters, which may lead to poor estimation accuracy. In this study, a health-related economic loss evaluation system is proposed, which deals with PM2.5 distribution, optimization of distribution parameters, and evaluation of health-related economic losses. This assessment system efficiently simulated the characteristic of PM2.5 concentrations in three cities of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and addressed economic losses estimation problems. The results indicate that the system not only provides a novel perspective on health-related economic loss assessment, but also assists policymakers in its practical application.

The implementation of Cleaner Production (CP) is a strategy for achieving a corporate's sustainable development and therefore is an important instrument for improving environmental performance. Due to the rapid economic development and urbanization in China, the stone processing industry is developing fast, resulting in several environmental problems. The stone processing sector has begun to implement the CP technologies and practices to tackle with environmental problems caused by the production process. However, the evaluation methodologies of the effectiveness of CP implementation in this sector have rarely been examined in the literature. This paper proposed a CP evaluation system that enables decision-makers to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of CP in the stone processing industry. A three-level framework was structured with 6 first-grade indicators and 24 sub-indicators according to the context and characteristics of the stone processing production. And the evaluation criteria were closely related to the laws, rules, regulations and discharge standards in China as well as the current CP technology level. Using analytical hierarchy process and fuzzy membership degree analysis, the weights of each indicators were determined, and evaluation results were achieved. Moreover, the evaluation methodology was verified to be reasonable and practical in the case study of a stone processing firm in Shandong Province. The entire and detailed assessment results demonstrate that the evaluation methodology is helpful in providing guidelines for the implementation of CP strategy in the industry of stone processing.

To curb environmental deterioration, the Chinese government has placed a growing emphasis on the green economy and has enhanced their performance evaluation system by adding indices of environmental protection. Data envelopment analysis (DEA), which is a nonparametric method, has been increasingly used to evaluate relative efficiencies for entities with multiple inputs and desirable and undesirable outputs. In this study, we propose two new DEA-based approaches to estimate technical, environmental, and eco-efficiencies. One is a centralized method and the other is an idea point-based method. The centralized method estimates the aggregate eco-efficiencies first and then decomposes them into technical and environmental efficiencies. The idea point method first constructs a Pareto front for each decision-making unit (DMU) and then finds the optimal solution for technical and environmental efficiency by proportionally shrinking from the idea point. Finally, eco-efficiency is computed using the optimal multipliers from solving the models. We demonstrate that a DMU is eco-efficient if and only if it is technically and environmentally efficient. The application of the model to China's regional road transport system verifies the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed methods.

The Sustainable Process Index is an ecological evaluation system specially developed for the requirements of process engineering. It allows reliable as well as convenient and quick valuation of processes on the base of data available to a process engineer even in the early stages of planning. The paper will discuss the application of this index in practical examples of interest to many process engineers. Energy systems are of great importance for almost any process, as they cause a considerable part of investment, as well as operating costs. From the ecological point of view, they may be even more influential as they cause direct emissions (e.g. SO2, NOx) as well as contributions to global ecological problems, most prominently global warming. The right decision about energy systems within a process therefore is of considerable importance for any process engineer. A comparison of different energy systems with the SPI will reveal the most important ecological features of energy systems using different conversion technologies as well as different raw materials and energy sources. The various pressures exerted by these systems on the environment will be discussed. However, the most important information derived from a valuation with the SPI is the relative size of these pressures. This bases the decision about the right energy system on an equal footing for all technological contenders. It allows also the setting of engineering and optimisation priorities.