Abstract: Regarding air pollutant as bad output, this paper evaluates air environmental efficiency and air environmental total factor productivity of 11 provinces for Yangtze River Economic Zone (YREZ) during the period of 2006-2015 and investigates the temporal-spatial heterogeneity based on SBM-Undesirable model and Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) productivity index. Then using Theil index decomposition approach to reveal the sources of regional differences of YREZ’s air environmental efficiency and build “efficiency-productivity” matrix to investigate the advantage and disadvantage of improving air environmental efficiency of 11 provinces in YREZ. The empirical results show that the YREZ’s air environmental efficiency is relatively low, regional differences are significantly existed with downtrend during the study period, large potential of air pollutant reduction is indicated. It is found that the gap between YREZ’s upstream, midstream and downstream and the gap between the provinces of YREZ’s upstream are the major sources of the regional gap of YREZ’s air environmental efficiency; Technical progress is the major driver of YREZ’s air environmental total factor productivity, and technical efficiency deterioration seriously block the improvement of YREZ’s air environmental productivity. The advantage and disadvantage for improving air environmental efficiency is different in YREZ’s 11 provinces. As a result, each province should take targeted measure to control air pollutant. The conclusion of this paper can help YREZ to improve air environmental efficiency and realize sustainable development.
Key words：Yangtze River Economic Zone; air environmental efficiency; temporal-spatial heterogeneity; driving factor