Peer Effects in Housing Size in Rural China

Tianjiao Li,Yongpei Guo,Changchun Feng,Hao Xi

doi:10.3390/land11020172

Abstract

In recent decades, rural China has witnessed a housing construction boom. In order to control the rapid growth of rural housing, both central and local governments have established quantitative restrictions on the floor numbers and total housing area; however, these have been relatively ineffective. Current research to explain this rapid growth in rural housing tends to consider independent household behavior, while social interactions among villagers are neglected. Therefore, the aim of this article is to examine the existence of peer effects in the housing size of villagers and whether they differ among different regions to better understand the influence of social interactions on individual housing behaviors, especially in the context of rural China. A spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances (SARAR) was used to analyze data from the 2014 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The results confirm that villagers’ peer effects do exist, indicating that rural households build housing not only to satisfy their dwelling needs but also to keep up with the other villagers’ housing size. Moreover, there are regional disparities in terms of peer effects in rural housing size. Among the three regional parts, the undeveloped region in the western parts showed the largest peer effects. Therefore, local governments, especially from the underdeveloped region, should pay attention to the villagers’ inner motivations behind housing behavior.

Highlights

Rural China has changed rapidly and profoundly since the economic reforms in1978 [1]
Variables related to macro background and individual characteristics are included in the current research on rural housing, but social interactions among individuals, which have been proven to play a major role in explaining a range of individual behaviors, housing size, in particular, have not been considered
This paper examines whether social interactions among villagers, namely peer effects, influence rural housing size based on the 2014 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey data

Summary

Introduction

Rural China has changed rapidly and profoundly since the economic reforms in1978 [1]. In terms of spatial restructuring, rural housing construction has boomed due to the miniaturization of the family structure, the reconfiguration of the economic activities of rural households, and the increasing wealth earned by out-migration [2,3]. Enthusiasm for rural housing construction has led to problems such as rural housing land sprawl, farmland erosion, and rural hollowing [4,5]. Since the 1990s, both central and local governments have established rigid quantitative restrictions for rural housing land and rural housing size, while punishing overdue construction [6,7]. In 2019, it was required by Heyuan Municipality that the total floor numbers in rural housing were restricted to three and a half. In the case of Guizhou Province, residential construction area was limited to 320 m2 per household in

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