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Air pollution, residents’ happiness, and environmental regulation: evidence from China

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Abstract

This study investigates the impact of air pollution on residents’ subjective happiness, using data from the China General Social Survey for 2013, 2015, and 2017, regional air pollution, and socioeconomic indicators. We find that air pollution has a negative effect on residents’ subjective happiness. Specifically, the average marginal effect of the logarithm of SO2 emissions on happiness is −0.0099 and significant at the 1% level; namely, a one-unit increase in \({\mathrm{lnSO}}_{2}\) will reduce the likelihood of residents feeling happy by 0.99%. This negative effect is greater for those who have children, are old, or have a higher level of education. We also empirically test two mechanisms by which air pollution affects subjective happiness—depressed mood and leisure activities outside the home—and demonstrate that environmental regulation can moderate the negative impact of air pollution on happiness, but the moderating effects are nonlinear. Environmental governance investments are more effective at the low level, pollutant discharge fees are more effective at the medium level, and complaints about environmental pollution are more effective at the high level. As well as enriching theoretical insights into the relationship between air pollution and happiness, this study provides a valuable reference for developing more suitable policies in relation to environmental management and national happiness.

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Notes

  1. Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China: http://www.mee.gov.cn/hdjl/.

  2. Air Quality Online Monitoring and Analysis Platform: https://www.aqistudy.cn/historydata/.

  3. There is a high correlation between lnGDP and lnSO2. To avoid estimation bias caused by collinearity, we regress lnGDP on lnSO2, and take the residual term as the proxy variable of economic development, according to Mei et al. (2020).

  4. http://www.mee.gov.cn/ywgz/fgbz/bz/bzwb/jcffbz/201203/t20120302_224166.shtml.

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Funding

This research was funded by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 18BTJ011), Humanities and Social Science Fund of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 20YJC790191), National Statistical Science Research Project of the National Bureau of Statistics of China (Grant No. 2020LY101), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72003049), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (Grant No. 2722021AJ015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Mathematics and Statistics, Hubei University, Wuhan, 430062, China

    Fang Xu & Xiao-Ling Luo

  2. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Di Zhou

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  1. Fang Xu
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  2. Xiao-Ling Luo
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  3. Di Zhou
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Contributions

Conceptualization, F.X. and D.Z.; data curation, X.-L.L.; formal analysis, F.X and D.Z.; methodology, F.X. and X.-L.L.; supervision, F.X., D.Z., and X.-L.L.; visualization, X.-L.L.; writing original draft, X.-L.L., F.X., and D.Z.; writing review and editing, F.X. and X.-L.L.

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Correspondence to Di Zhou.

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Appendix A

Appendix A

Fig. 2
figure 2

Spatial distribution of SO2 emissions, 2017

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Xu, F., Luo, XL. & Zhou, D. Air pollution, residents’ happiness, and environmental regulation: evidence from China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 64665–64679 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20233-x

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