The Impact of Air Quality on Effective Labor Supply: Based on the Survey Data of Zhejiang Province in China

Abstract

Labor is one of the most important factors of production and the basis for the development of social productivity. China’s aging population problem is serious, and the study of the labor supply is of great importance in order to achieve its second centenary goal regarding social development. In this study, four stage mixed sampling was used to conduct a questionnaire survey in the Zhejiang province of China, and 590 valid questionnaires were obtained. An ordered logit model and sample selection model were used to analyze the impact of air quality on the effective labor supply. The results show that the effective labor supply was significantly correlated with air quality. That is, the worse the air quality was, the lower the effective labor supply was, although this relationship was more explicit for people who worked indoors. When air quality impedes residents’ daily lives and even affects their health, it indirectly affects the effective supply of local labor. This paper indicates the causal relationship between economic development and the ecological environment and has enlightening significance for the realization of sustainable development.

The Perception of Environmental Information Disclosure on Rural Residents’ Pro-Environmental Behavior

“…The OLS regression results demonstrate that age has a substantial positive impact on the PEB of rural people among the control variables, implying that the older the residents are, the more active they are in PEB. The selection of control variables in this paper is similar to that of Yang et al [70]. Yin et al demonstrated that public environmental concerns have no significant impact on their environmental engagement [60], considering gender, age, and income levels as control variables.…”