Impacts of pollution abatement projects on happiness: An exploratory study in China

Abstract

Pollution has been a global concern in recent decades, promoting related actions in an increasing number of areas. While pollution can lead to unhappiness, will pollution abatement simply increase people's happiness? We analyze relevant happiness data collected before and after China's South-to-North Water Diversion Eastern Route Pollution Control Project to test this idea. The empirical results indicate that the pollution abatement project may not enhance happiness in its duration. Some residents may temporarily sacrifice something (such as employment or income), which offsets the positive effect of environmental improvement on their happiness. In subgroup analyses, rural people are found to benefit more from environmental improvement and suffer less in happiness compared with the urban, and so are lowincome people compared with the high-income ones. The findings offer new insights into the costs of pollution in terms of happiness and highlight the need to abate pollution meticulously.

The Impact of Intergenerational Support on Mental Health among Young Rural Women

“…For example, in the process of pollution reduction and environmental improvement, happiness cost transfer has occurred. Some studies have noted that the rural population has bene ted greatly from emission reduction projects and has a high sense of happiness, which has bene ted from temporary sacri ces (such as employment and income) 51 . Similarly, the economic support provided by parents can alleviate the economic pressure of young rural women to a certain extent and help them maintain "half the sky of happiness".…”

Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation of Happiness Index of Nine Cities in Pearl River Delta Based on AHP

“…Environmental economists have found that the environment can improve or reduce residents' well-being by stimulating residents' senses, such as air pollution is not conducive to human health, brings constant to residents' life, and reduces residents' well-being [27][28][29]. Studies in China found that CO change emissions significantly reduced residents' happiness [30], the disclosure of the mandatory air pollution index can boost happiness [31], but pollution emissions and environmental regulations do not necessarily improve happiness [32,33], the subjective concept of air pollution has a negative impact on residents' well-being [34], urbanization construction brings about perfect living infrastructure, accelerates the development of leisure tourism, and improves the happiness of residents, the construction of urban parks increases residents' happiness [35], and higher housing prices and wage growth from urbanization have a positive impact on happiness, but it also brings traffic congestion and smog to reduce residents' happiness [36].…”

Air Pollution, Residents’ Happiness, and Environmental Regulation: Evidence from China

“…Liu et al (2019) compared the impact of environmental pollution (air and water) in baseline-tax areas and high-tax areas on residents' happiness and showed for the first time that environmental tax can alleviate the negative impact of environmental pollution on residents' happiness. Jin et al (2020) analyzed happiness data collected before and after China's South-to-North Water Diversion Eastern Route Pollution Control Project and found that the pollution abatement project may not enhance happiness in its duration. However, the latter literature related to this paper only involves a relatively small part of the environmental regulation system, which may not be representative.…”

“…We also added several control variables. Based on several studies (Yuan et al 2018;Chen et al 2020;Jin et al 2020;Li and Fan 2016), we introduced individual, family, and provincial characteristic variables to control for their influence on residents' happiness. Individual and family characteristic variables mainly include: age, gender, marital status, self-rated health, years of education, income status, social security participation, political status, residence type, and whether or not the individual has children.…”

“…There are two relevant articles. One shows that an air pollution tax has an alleviating effect on the relationship between air pollution and residents' happiness (Liu et al 2019), and the other holds that the implementation of "China's South-to-North Water Diversion Eastern Route Pollution Control Project" will not improve happiness (Jin et al 2020). However, the environmental regulations used in these two articles are the same policies implemented in many provinces across the country, which cannot reflect well the differences in environmental regulations.…”