Exploring the effect of subjective air pollution on happiness in China
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Exploring the effect of subjective air pollution on happiness in China Yan Song 1,2 & Aina Zhou 1 & Ming Zhang 1,2 Received: 5 February 2020 / Accepted: 22 July 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Previous papers that study the relationship between air pollution and happiness have not paid much attention to subjective air pollution. This paper attempts to explore the influence of subjective air pollution on happiness, the heterogeneity of the effects, and people’s subjective willingness for improving air quality. We match the data of Chinese General Social Survey with local air quality and mainly based on the method of regression discontinuity. Our study shows that the public’s subjective air pollution perception has significant negative effects on their happiness. The negative effects on happiness of unhealthy people and middleaged/old people are greater than that of healthy people and young people. Moreover, residents who are relatively vulnerable to the harm of air pollution appear to be more willing to pay for the improvement of air quality. These results indicate that in order to improve air quality more rationally and effectively, not only should the government concentrate on the improvement of objective air quality but also pay attention to the public’s subjective feelings, as well as taking the subjective needs of local residents into consideration in the process of air pollution control. Keywords Subjective air pollution . Happiness . Heterogeneity . Willingness to pay
Introduction With the enhancement of environmental protection awareness in recent years, the public has paid more attention to subjective environmental pollution and its impacts on their daily life (Yuan et al. 2018; Song et al. 2019a). Folkman and Lazarus (1980) have found that the residents not only suffered from objective air pollution but also subjective pollution. Subjective air pollution is people’s subjective evaluation of air quality, and it is usually influenced by air quality reports, news, conversations, their health conditions, etc. of a period of time (Li et al. 2018). The public’s subjective evaluations of the intensity and hazard of air pollution are generally more serious than the professional assessments from scientists and experts (Dons et al. 2018). Due to the bias between residents’ Responsible editor: Baojing Gu * Ming Zhang [email protected] 1
School of Economics and Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221000, China
2
Center for Environmental Management and Economics Policy Research, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
subjective air quality and the monitoring data, the public’s subjective perception of air pollution has caused excessive anxiety (Brody et al. 2004). It is harmful to their physical and mental health (Scheier and Carver 1992; Thoits 1995). Therefore, it is essential for China to explore the effects of subjective air pollution on residents’ happiness, which could help the public to estab
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