Will the use of solid fuels reduce the life satisfaction of rural residents—Evidence from China

Abstract

Solid fuels usage may have a negative impact on people's living environment, worsen indoor air quality, thus affect people's health status. Using CFPS panel data from 2010 to 2018, this paper studies the impact of solid fuels usage on life satisfaction of rural residents in China. Through two-stage least squares regression and other methods, we find that the use of solid fuels is negatively correlated with life satisfaction of rural residents. When rural residents use solid fuels for cooking, their life satisfaction will be reduced by around 0.082–0.138 units. Through grouping regression, we found that the negative impact of the use of solid fuels on the life satisfaction of rural residents increases with the increase of the individual's age. Through further mechanism analysis, we found that the negative impact of the use of solid fuels on the life satisfaction may be due to that the use of solid fuels will reduce the probability of individuals being in a healthy state, thus leading to a reduction in labor supply and a decline in income levels.