Abstract
As a major public emergency, the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously affected people’s lives worldwide, resulting in changes in housing demand. Based on the China Household Finance Survey in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021, and the COVID-19 infections and confirmed cases in all cities, this study applies a difference-in-differences (DID) model to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on households’ housing consumption. The results show that the COVID-19 pandemic reduces households’ housing consumption. This decline is caused by changes in households’ purchase intentions and households’ deposit. Furthermore, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is more pronounced for households living in first- and second-tier cities and in central and eastern China, and COVID-19 has a greater impact on the housing consumption of urban hukou households and households residing in owner-occupied housing. Overall, this study provides new insights into the impacts of public emergencies on household housing consumption and decisions regarding housing market participation.
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Funding
This research was funded by the Research Center for Modernization of Urban and Rural Governance of Chengdu Key Research Base of Philosophy and Social Sciences (Grant No. CXZL202304) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72273109).
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Appendix
Appendix
1.1 Relevant survey questions
1. Gender
A. male.
B. female.
2. Year of Birth .
3. Education .
A. Never attended school.
B. Primary school.
C. Junior high school.
D. High school.
E. Technical secondary school/vocational high school.
F. Junior college/vocational college.
G. Bachelor.
H. Master.
I. PhD.
4. Type of hukou .
A. Agricultural registered permanent residence.
B. Non-agricultural registered permanent residence.
C. Unified household registration.
5. Marital status
A. Unmarried.
B. Married.
C. Cohabitation.
D. Separation.
E. divorce.
F. Widow.
G. Remarriage.
6. Do you have a job?
A. Yes.
B. No.
7. Number of family members living together.
8. Do you own a house?
A. Yes.
B. No.
9. The house you live in is
A. Owner-occupied.
B. Rented.
C. Others.
10. What is the monthly rental expenditure? (Including rent, water, electricity, fuel, property management, fiber optic, heating, and other expenses).
11. Do you have any plans to buy a new home/build a new home in the future?
A. There is a plan to purchase a new house.
B. There is a plan to construct a new house.
C. There are both new purchases and new construction plans.
D. No.
Note: For total annual income and total annual assets, because we are using the data results of nearly 100 questions to integrate the calculation, we do not list all the relevant questions here due to space constraints. Assets include financial assets and non-financial assets, and financial assets specifically include demand deposits, time deposits, stock funds, wealth management products, bonds, derivatives, non-renminbi assets, gold, other financial assets, cash, and loans; non-financial assets include production and operation projects, real estate and land, vehicles, and other non-financial assets. Similarly, CHFS also includes questions related to household housing loans.
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He, C., Lv, J., Li, D. et al. How public emergencies impact Chinese households’ housing consumption: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic. J Hous and the Built Environ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-023-10107-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-023-10107-0