Optimizing public action in local governments’ green transition: modernization and efficiency patterns

Municipal sports services in the European Union are facing a challenge: achieving climate and digital transition objectives in accordance with the European Green Deal and the 2030 Agenda while withstanding increasing fiscal pressure. This research examines how digitalization and energy efficiency improvements are associated with operational efficiency in Spanish municipal sports services over the period 2019–2023. A multi-methodological approach combining double bootstrap Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) procedure, Random Forest and Permutation Importance machine learning techniques, is applied using a panel of 165 Spanish municipalities (populations of 5,001 to 20,000 inhabitants, n = 825 observations). The results indicate that a 0.1-point increase in digitization is associated with a 0.85% point reduction in inefficiency (p < 0.01). Partial dependence analysis suggests an empirical benchmark around 32 kWh/€ of energy intensity: below this benchmark, each 5 kWh/€ reduction is associated with a + 3.15% efficiency gain; above it, the gain is only +1.05%. This nonlinear pattern should be interpreted as a sample-specific descriptive benchmark rather than as a generally applicable policy cut-off. Overall, digitalization and energy efficiency emerge as the two factors most consistently associated with efficiency, and the results may inform differentiated municipal planning for facility modernization.