How does owning commercial housing affect the subjective well-being of rural-urban migrants?--The mediating effect of housing assets and the moderating effect of debt.

Abstract

Houses mean a lot to Chinese people, and in the context of the urban-rural dualist system, town housing has a special significance for rural-urban migrants. Based on the 2017 China Household Finance Survey(CHFS) data, this study uses the Ordered Logit (OLogit) model to empirically test the effect of owning commercial housing on the subjective well-being(SWB) of rural-urban migrants, and through the mediating effect and moderating effect to conduct an in-depth investigation into the intrinsic effect mechanism and further explains the relationship between the two and the current residential location of their family. The results of the study show that: (1) Owning commercial housing can significantly enhances the subjective well-being(SWB) of rural-urban migrants, and the findings remain robust after using alternative model, adjusting the sample size, correcting for sample selectivity bias using propensity score matching(PSM), and controlling for potential endogeneity bias combining instrumental variables and conditional mixed process(CMP); (2) The effect of owning commercial housing on the subjective well-being(SWB) of the first generation rural-urban migrants, rural-urban migrants in the eastern and central regions, and those who obtained housing before the rapid rise in house prices is more pronounced; (3) Commercial housing acts on the subjective well-being(SWB) of rural-urban migrants through the mediating effect of housing assets, and there is some regional variation in the mediating effect of housing assets. At the same time, the household debt acts as a positive moderator between commercial housing and the subjective well-being(SWB) of rural-urban migrants; (4) Even with commercial housing, rural-urban migrants whose families are currently living in rural areas still have a stronger sense of subjective well-being (SWB).