Congestion effects of energy and its influencing factors: China's transportation sector

This paper constructs a two-stage undesirable and desirable congestion model, which distinguishes purely technical inefficiency from congestion, to study the energy congestion of 30 transportation sectors in China from 2011 to 2020. The Heckman model is used to analyze the influence mechanism of various factors on the undesirable congestion of energy, which avoids sample selection bias. The results show that: (1) The undesirable congestion of energy mainly exists in the transport sector of the western region, while the desirable congestion of energy only exists in the transport sectors of the eastern and central regions. (2) Purely technical inefficiency in the transportation sector does not usually occur in isolation. (3) Population density and the proportion of clean freight turnover have a negative impact on the undesirable congestion of energy.