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How does air quality affect residents’ life satisfaction? Evidence based on multiperiod follow-up survey data of 122 cities in China

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Abstract

Since entering the new era, China’s socialist contradiction has been transformed into the contradiction between the people’s growing need for a better life and the unbalanced and inadequate development. How to improve the quality of people’s life through the improvement of air quality has become an important content restricting social development and a key problem to be solved. Based on the life satisfaction (LS) method, this study takes air quality into the individual utility function, and through matching China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), two phases of microindividual tracking data with 122 urban environmental quality data innovatively investigate the impact of air quality on residents’ LS and its income substitution effect. The results show that air quality significantly reduces residents’ LS, among which, different air pollutants and comprehensive air quality AQI have significant negative effects. And PM10 has the highest marginal effect on different LS evaluation, SO2 has the smallest marginal effect, and AQI marginal effect is close to PM10. In terms of group heterogeneity, NO2 and SO2 have group influence differences in age group, regional economic group, gender group, and family per capita income group. But PM10 and AQI do not show group influence heterogeneity, and air quality has significant negative effect on LS of different groups. In addition, the interaction between air quality and income level shows that air quality strengthens the difference of residents’ LS caused by income level difference. According to the equilibrium condition of residents’ individual utility function, the improvement of air quality by 1% is equivalent to the improvement of residents’ LS by 23.4402% of income. Firstly, air quality has an important impact on residents’ LS, and different air pollutants have different effects. Secondly, the impact of air quality on LS of different groups is heterogeneous and mainly diversified in age group, regional economic group, gender group, and family per capital income group. Finally, there is substitution effect between air quality and regional GDP growth and household income, which affects residents’ LS. Thirdly, the conclusion shows that the improvement of air quality is difficult to be replaced by other ways. Good air quality can not only directly improve residents’ LS, but also has economic effect.

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Notes

  1. http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/i/jyjl/l/202102/20210203038237.shtml.According to the preliminary statistics of China's GDP in 2020, the per capita GDP is calculated.

  2. The International Center for research on cancer under the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies carcinogens as follows: class I carcinogens refer to substances with sufficient evidence to prove their carcinogenicity, such as alcohol, formaldehyde, mustard gas, neutron radiation, radium and other radioactive elements, and air pollutants represented by asbestos, aflatoxin, and PM2.5; class II carcinogens refer to substances with certain evidence to prove their carcinogenicity animal carcinogenicity, but there is limited evidence to support the existence of human carcinogenic substances, such as lead and its compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls and DDT, naphthalene, and nitrobenzene; three types of carcinogens refer to the substances that lack sufficient evidence to prove human carcinogenicity and experimental animal carcinogenicity but have sufficient theoretical support, such as aniline, phthalate plasticizer, and sudan red.

  3. Hainan province, Tibet autonomous pegion, and Ningxia autonomous region were not included in the sample.

Abbreviations

CHARLS:

China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

API:

air pollution index

AQI:

air quality index

LS:

life satisfaction

LSA:

life satisfaction approach

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Availability of data and materials

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at the following URL/DOI: http://charls.pku.edu.cn/.

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Funding

The authors are very grateful for the financial support of National Natural Science Fund of China (71904167) and Zhejiang Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (20NDQN302YB).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Administration, Zhejiang University of Finance & Economics, No. 18 Xueyuan Street, Xiasha Higher Education Park, Zhejiang, 310018, Hangzhou, China

    Huan Liu

  2. School of Political Science and Public Administration, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Tiantian Hu

Authors
  1. Huan Liu
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  2. Tiantian Hu
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Contributions

H.L. revised it critically for important intellectual content and approved the version to be published and carry out language retouching and modification. T.T.H. made a substantial contribution to the concept and design of the work and interpretation of data and drafted the article.

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Correspondence to Huan Liu.

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Responsible Editor: Lotfi Aleya

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Highlights

Air quality has an important impact on residents’ life satisfaction, and different air pollutants have different effects.

The impact of air quality on life satisfaction of different groups is heterogeneous and mainly manifested in age group, regional economic group, gender group, and family per capita income group.

There is substitution effect between air quality and regional GDP growth and household income, which affects residents’ life satisfaction.

Huan Liu and Tiantian Hu are the co first-authors.

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Liu, H., Hu, T. How does air quality affect residents’ life satisfaction? Evidence based on multiperiod follow-up survey data of 122 cities in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 61047–61060 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15022-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15022-x

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