School of Management Engineering, Shandong Jianzhu University, Jinan, 250000, China.
School of Management Engineering, Shandong Jianzhu University, Jinan, 250000, China; School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China.
J Environ Manage. 2024 Sep;368:122203. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.122203. Epub 2024 Aug 16.
Existing studies that assess the impact of cooking with dirty solid fuels on human beings tend to underestimate the adverse impact on welfare. This paper aims to address this research gap by examining the happiness benefits of transitioning from solid fuel to cleaner alternatives. Using an extensive panel dataset from China, which includes 150,248 observations collected from 43,251 survey respondents interviewed between 2010 and 2018, this study employs various complementary methodologies, such as the fixed-effect model, propensity score matching, and time-varying difference-in-differences, to overcome challenges related to treatment selection bias and unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity. Further, life satisfaction approach is used to evaluate the economic benefits of cooking energy transition. Our findings indicate that switching from firewood to LPG/natural gas/gas can significantly enhance individual subjective well-being (SWB). Although the improvement brought about by electricity is slightly lower than that of LPG/natural gas/gas, it remains substantial. Notably, the positive effect is more pronounced among specific demographic groups, including females, rural residents, and low-income families. Moreover, these well-being improvements can manifest quickly and persist many years before any noticeable enhancements in physical health. This effect further amplifies over time. However, biogas shows no significant effect on SWB. These findings underscore the importance of clean fuels that contribute to increased happiness, as they are more likely to be consistently adopted. Finally, we estimate that the economic benefits of the well-being improvements resulting from the use of LPG/natural gas/gas and electricity range between $5.15 and $5.44 per day.
现有研究评估了使用脏污固体燃料烹饪对人类的影响，这些研究往往低估了对福利的不利影响。本文旨在通过研究从固体燃料向更清洁替代品过渡对幸福感的影响来弥补这一研究空白。本文利用中国一个广泛的面板数据集，该数据集包含 2010 年至 2018 年间对 43251 名受访者进行的 150248 次观察，采用固定效应模型、倾向得分匹配和时变差分等多种补充方法，克服了与处理选择偏差和不可观测的时不变异质性相关的挑战。此外，还采用生活满意度方法来评估烹饪能源转型的经济效益。研究结果表明，从薪柴转换为液化石油气/天然气/煤气可以显著提高个人的主观幸福感（SWB）。虽然电的改善程度略低于液化石油气/天然气/煤气，但仍相当可观。值得注意的是，这种积极影响在特定的人口群体中更为明显，包括女性、农村居民和低收入家庭。此外，这些幸福感的提升可以在几年内迅速显现，并在任何明显的身体健康改善之前持续多年。这种效应随着时间的推移进一步放大。然而，沼气对 SWB 没有显著影响。这些发现强调了清洁燃料的重要性，因为它们更有可能被持续采用，从而提高幸福感。最后，我们估计使用液化石油气/天然气/煤气和电所带来的幸福感提升的经济效益在每天 5.15 美元至 5.44 美元之间。
