Report title: Dirty skies lower China's subjective well-being

Reported by: Professor Mizhifu (Deputy Dean of University College London, UK)

Report time: 9:30-12:30 am on Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Place: 6th floor of the main building of Beijing University of Technology

Report summary: Self-reported life safety of China's population has not improved as much as expected during the economic boom, which was accepted by a significant decision in environmental performance Is environmental pollution the culprit for the lagging subjective well-being? To explore this issue, this paper adopts the sentiment analysis method to construct a real-time daily subjective well-being metric at the city level based on the big data of online search traces. Using daily data from 13 Chinese cities centred on Beijing between August 2014 and December 2019, we look at the correlation between subjective well-being and air pollution and the heterogeneity in this relationship based on two separate identification strategies. We find that air pollutants are negatively correlated with subjective well-being, and well-being tends to decline more from pollution during hot seasons. In addition, residents in wealthier regions tend to be more sensitive to air pollution. This result may be explained by the differences in the subjective perception of air pollution and personal preferences at different levels of income. These findings provide information about the concerns of the public to the central government, thereby helping it take appropriate actions to respond to the dynamics of subjective well-being.

Profile: Mi Zhifu, professor, doctoral supervisor and deputy dean of Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, and senior visiting scholar of the London School of Political Economics. Bachelor of Mathematics, Shandong University, Doctor of Energy and Environmental Policy Research Center, Beijing University of Technology. Committed to climate change economic and policy research, the results were published in Lancet, Science sub-journal, Nature sub-journal and other internationally renowned journals. It has been selected into the Forbes European "30 under 30" elite list and the "highly cited scientists" of KoruiVian, and has won the Outstanding Scientific Research Tutor Award of University College London (1 per year), the World Sustainable Development Award, the Hundred Most Influential International Academic Papers Award of China, the Best Paper Award of Energy Economics, the Best Young Scholar Paper Award of Environmental Research Letters, the Applied Energy Highly cited Original Paper Award, etc. Co-editor of SSCI Journal Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (IF: 5.059).