Evaluating the efficiency of Norwegian aquaculture production areas: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

Aquaculture has significantly contributed to the Norwegian economy, however, its total production has experienced a slight decline in the last two years. Environmental sustainability and limited production space are considered as challenging issues for this sector, which limit the potential for expansion. This study examines the technical and scale efficiency of Norwegian aquaculture at the production areas level. Input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models were developed to evaluate efficiency. The results show that the applied DEA models, under two assumptions of returns to scale, successfully identified inefficient areas. The proposed reference sets diagrams facilitate the identification of areas where inefficiencies should be reduced.