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A study of the impact of environmental surroundings on personal well-being in urban China using a multi-item well-being indicator

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Abstract

We examine the relationship between atmospheric and water pollution, traffic congestion, access to parkland and personal well-being using a survey administered across six Chinese cities in 2007. In contrast to existing studies of well-being determinants by economists which typically employ single-item indicators, we use the Personal Well-being Index (PWI). We also employ the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) to measure job satisfaction, which is one of the variables for which we control when examining the relationship between environmental surroundings and personal well-being. Previous research by psychologists has shown the PWI and JSS to have good psychometric properties in western and Chinese samples. A robust finding is that in cities with higher levels of atmospheric pollution and traffic congestion, respondents report lower levels of personal well-being ceteris paribus. Specifically, we find that a one standard deviation increase in suspended particles or sulphur dioxide emissions is roughly equivalent to a 12–13% reduction in average monthly income in the six cities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Russell Smyth

  2. Department of Management, Monash University, Wellington Road, Clayton 3800, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Ingrid Nielsen & Qingguo Zhai

  3. School of Business and Economics, Liaoning Shihua University, Fushun, People’s Republic of China

    Qingguo Zhai & Tiemin Liu

  4. Department of Business English, College of Foreign Languages, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Yin Liu

  5. School of Economics and Business Administration, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, People’s Republic of China

    Chunyong Tang

  6. School of Business Administration, Liaoning Technical University, Huludao, People’s Republic of China

    Zhihong Wang

  7. Department of Economics, Wuhan University, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China

    Zuxiang Wang

  8. School of Economics, Dalian Nationalities University, Dalian, People’s Republic of China

    Juyong Zhang

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  1. Russell Smyth
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  2. Ingrid Nielsen
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  3. Qingguo Zhai
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  9. Juyong Zhang
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Correspondence to Ingrid Nielsen.

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Smyth, R., Nielsen, I., Zhai, Q. et al. A study of the impact of environmental surroundings on personal well-being in urban China using a multi-item well-being indicator. Popul Environ 32, 353–375 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-010-0123-z

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