Article
The Development of an Efficiency-Based Global Green
Manufacturing Innovation Index: An Input-Oriented
DEA Approach
Hisham Alidrisi
Citation: Alidrisi, H. The
Development of an Efficiency-Based
Global Green Manufacturing
Innovation Index: An Input-Oriented
DEA Approach. Sustainability 2021,
13, 12697. https://doi.org/10.3390/
su132212697
Academic Editor: Antonella Petrillo
Received: 26 October 2021
Accepted: 15 November 2021
Published: 17 November 2021
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affil-
iations.
Copyright: © 2021 by the author.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University,
Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia; hmalidrisi@kau.edu.sa
Abstract:
Innovation-based economic growth is considered to be a vital strategic aim for all economies,
but environmentally friendly concepts and sustainable development (SD) must also be considered.
The literature on the Global Innovation Index (GII) shows various investigations relevant to in-
novation, yet the lack of comprehensive consideration within the GII of environmental concerns
represents a critical challenge. This paper aims to provide a holistic-perspective evaluation model for
the top 15 manufacturing countries worldwide in order to resolve this. The efficiency-based Global
Green Manufacturing Innovation Index (GGMII) was developed by formulating an input-oriented
data envelopment analysis model. Criteria such as the value added to the gross domestic product
(GDP), corresponding CO
2
emissions, and unemployment rates were examined in order to repre-
sent the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of SD, respectively. Other scientific and
technological dimensions were also considered. The data corresponding to all ten of the criteria
were collected from World Bank Open Data. The results show a mismatch between the original GII
and the proposed GGMII for the top eight manufacturing countries (the United States, the United
Kingdom, Germany, Korea, France, China, Japan, and Canada), while the remaining countries (Italy,
Spain, Russia, India, Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia) occupied the same rank in both indices, but
showed a sizable diminution in their original GII scores. The proposed GGMII might be utilized as a
benchmarking instrument for all countries worldwide in the future.
Keywords:
green manufacturing innovation index; global index; green innovation index; sustain-
ability; data envelopment analysis; multiple criteria decision making; World Bank; United States;
China; efficiency
1. Introduction
Innovation-based economic growth is considered a vital strategy for attaining eco-
nomic success in employment and overall prosperity. The environmental degradation
associated with such advancements has resulted in the appearance of several environ-
mentally friendly concepts, such as green/sustainable development (SD) [
1
]. The rapid
development of green innovation worldwide is contributing significantly to almost all
kinds of industries [
2
]. However, attempts to research such promising concepts are still
in need of unbounded and continued support [
3
]. Even though the recent literature on
the Green Innovation Index (GII) has provided various investigations relevant to different
aspects of innovation, some key technological and/or practical issues have not yet been
handled appropriately.
The dilemma of creating a comprehensive GII that considers environmental concerns
represents one such critical issue. Even when the latest version of the GII (Figure 1),
published in 2020, employed data envelopment analysis (DEA) as a benchmarking tool to
measure economies’ multi-dimensional performances with respect to innovation [
4
], the
sustainability dimensions (in particular, the environmental measures) were not explicitly
included either as inputs or as outputs. Moreover, the structural relationships among the
Sustainability 2021, 13, 12697. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212697 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
