Congestion analysis in DEA inputs under weight restrictions

Abstract

Data envelopment analysis (DEA), which is used to determine the efficiency of a decision-making unit (DMU), is able to recognize the amount of input congestion. Moreover, the relative importance of inputs and outputs can be incorporated into DEA models by weight restrictions. These restrictions or a priori weights are introduced by the decision maker and lead to changes in models and efficiency interpretation. In this paper, we present an approach to determine the value of congestion in inputs under the weight restrictions. Some discussions show how weight restrictions can affect the congestion amount.

Keywords:

• data envelopment analysis
• weight restrictions
• congestion

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to the anonymous referee for valuable comments and suggestions, which have greatly improved the earlier version of this paper. The authors would like to thank the editorial administration, Sarah Parry, for her great attention. The author would like to express their gratitude to Dr V Dehnavi for his help on linguistic editing of the manuscript.