An Economic Analysis Of Traffic Accidents In China Based On The Consumption Perspective

Automobile consumption leads to traffic congestion, air pollution and other negative externalities of consumption, traffic accidents are the most destructive and harmful to society. In recent years, the decrease of the number of traffic accidents is worth to study. The micro level, traffic accidents is related to the degree of attention and behavior amounts of the consumers. The macro level, social traffic accidents are affected by the social traffic's supply and demand. Therefore, the falling of the number of traffic accidents is the result of multiple factors. By analyzing the development of China's private auto consumption and the public transport consumption in the process of urbanization, found that Chinese consumption patterns are related to the traffic consumption mode,the changes in number of traffic accidents of each province is proved to be the inverted U-shaped,this is consistent with the statistical laws of developed countries, but the explanation to this phenomenon by4 the previous scholars are not applied to China, then I put forward a new interpretation from the perspective of long-term and short-term. From the perspective of short-term, synthesize pigovian tax and the thought of coase theorem, the compensation law represented by tort liability principle and the shock law represented by fine or imprisonment can internalize the externality, guide the traffic consumer rationally take effective attention level and behavior, so as to reduce the number of traffic accidents; From a long-term perspective, affected by the public transport sector's economies of scale, the interaction of the government investment and household consumption changes the two patterns of traffic consumption's supply and demand, while urbanization produce migration effect and department diversion effect, under the influence of circular and cumulative causation effect,the number of traffic accidents has a decrease. In this analysis, based on a 1996-2013 national total data and provincial panel data to construct a nonlinear econometric model that contains the dummy of law and the urbanization rate quadratic term. The results show that the legal system has a significant effect on the dercease of the traffic accidents, but the popularity of the law needs some time, leading to a certain lag effect; the rise of the urbanization rate will result in an increase of traffic accidents, but the speed of the increase is slowing down, when the urbanization rate reaches a certain level, the traffic accidents will decline; the development of public transport sector has a significant effect on suppressing the accidents. I also find two Peltzman effect, the more traffic congestion, road quality, the more and accidents. Therefore, the government should carefully formulated the policy to stimulate traffic supply or control traffic demand, at the same time, enhance the level of legislation and law enforcement ability on the traffic accidents, strengthen the publicity and popularity of Traffic Law, and to develop public transport systems, increase subsidies for public transport to reduce the hazards of traffic accidents.