Abstract

Using data from the China Family Panel Studies, this study examines the socioeconomic characteristics of Internet users, as well as the relationships between the dynamics of different forms of online activities and the subjective well-being of urbanites and rural migrants in urban China. The study finds that online behavior may clearly reflect differences in individuals’ personal traits and socioeconomic positions. Patterns of the association between online activities and subjective well-being tend to differ among rural migrants and urbanites, especially in terms of depression. A difference-in-differences model is employed to estimate the impact of intensified engagement in online activities on depression and life satisfaction from 2010 to 2016. The results show that individuals who exhibited increased frequency of online entertainment appeared to be less depressed and more satisfied with their lives. Spending more time on online social networking has a similar impact on rural migrants, but not on urbanites. These findings suggest that the rapid development of urban China’s online community has important implications for residents’ subjective well-being.

Highlights

  • China’s current, unprecedented economic development is being powered by a huge influx of rural migrant workers

  • In contrast to findings derived from cross-sectional data, our results show that increased engagement in online information acquisition appears to have a negative impact on residents’ subjective well-being in urban China, the magnitude of this impact is relatively small

  • Rural migrants are less active Internet uses than urbanites, both groups tended to spend more time online in 2016 than in 2010

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Summary

Introduction

China’s current, unprecedented economic development is being powered by a huge influx of rural migrant workers. There is a growing body of literature investigating the impact of China’s rapid urbanization on Chinese people’s subjective well-being (Davey and Rato 2012; Easterlin et al 2012; Jiang et al 2012; Cheng et al 2013; Bian and Xiao 2014). These studies have focused on a number of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of subjective well-being.

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