Chen Jian, Hassan Taimoor, Zhao Di
School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
School of Economics and Management, Anhui Polytechnic University, Wuhu, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 Jan;30(5):13532-13550. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-23070-0. Epub 2022 Sep 22.
Household electricity conservation is a non-negligible aspect of environmental pollution with growing importance for an eco-friendly economy and society. However, debates regarding household electricity consumption have placed more emphasis on the physical attributes of the dwellings, demographic characteristics and the socioeconomic behaviour of households; few studies have directly discussed the awareness of environmental pollution. Based on the 'China Family Panel Studies' surveys with an extracted 8249 households in 25 provinces from 2014 to 2018, we analyse whether or not and to what extent the awareness of environmental pollution impacts household electricity consumption. The study finds that the awareness of environmental pollution rather than actual environmental pollution increases household electricity consumption. The finding is robust under various model specifications. Given a 1% increase in the awareness of environmental pollution, households living in southern China, located in eastern China or living in an urban area were found to have higher electricity consumption. To address possible estimation bias due to self-selection, we design a quasi-policy-shock variable to describe the severity of the perceived environmental pollution and run the propensity score matching regression (PSM). The finding still holds.
家庭用电节约是环境污染中一个不可忽视的方面，对于生态友好型经济和社会的重要性日益凸显。然而，关于家庭用电消费的讨论更多地侧重于住宅的物理属性、人口特征和家庭的社会经济行为；很少有研究直接探讨对环境污染的认知。基于2014年至2018年对25个省份8249户家庭抽取的“中国家庭追踪调查”，我们分析了对环境污染的认知是否以及在多大程度上影响家庭用电消费。研究发现，对环境污染的认知而非实际环境污染会增加家庭用电消费。这一发现在各种模型设定下都是稳健的。发现环境污染认知每增加1%，居住在中国南方、东部地区或城市地区的家庭用电量更高。为解决因自我选择导致的可能估计偏差，我们设计了一个准政策冲击变量来描述感知到的环境污染的严重程度，并进行倾向得分匹配回归（PSM）。这一发现仍然成立。
