Electrification and residential well-being in China

Abstract

In the past 20 years, China has undergone a rapid process of electrification, which has contributed to the modernization of people's lives. This paper associated household electricity consumption, appliance service function, total cost of electricity consumption to life well-being for the first time, and explained the structural characteristics of these changes. The welfare index from appliance services is defined as the result of the interaction between electricity consumption and appliance operation, and is used as an indicator to assess the improvement of household well-being. We sorted out 9 types of service functions of appliances, estimated the structure of household electricity consumption, total electricity cost and welfares received, and analyzed the factors that enhance welfare and their contributions. The results show that the electricity consumed by 12 main household appliances per household per year increased from 358 kWh in 2000 to 1419.5 kWh in 2020, and the total household electricity cost increases from 1315.74 yuan (RMB) to 6772.68 yuan. The quantity and structure of both have changed greatly. The service functions provided by appliances are increasingly diversified, have expanded from the basic services such as lighting, watching TV, refrigerated food to nine aspects including communication and transportation. The quality of life of residents continues to be improved, and the welfare index has increased from 2.48 to 7.82. There is a good linear relationship between the index and the three independent variables. The unit contributions of household disposable income, total electricity cost and household population size to the welfare index were 0.0836, 0.1195 and −1.6161, respectively. To accelerate electrification and enhance people's well-being, China needs to further improve the power and communication infrastructure, promote the application of intelligent technology, and implement precise encouragement policies.