Influence Of Internet On Chinese Residents' Well-being

People's happiness is the fundamental starting point and destination of national rejuvenation and national prosperity.Happiness is an important indicator for evaluating the quality of China's economic development and the quality of life of residents,and it is related to the sharing of the development achievements of reform and opening-up.Since the 21 st century,the Internet has been rapidly developed and popularized in China,which has profoundly affected social and economic development and has become an indispensable tool in people's lives and work.China has also raised the Internet strategy to the national level.People also pay extensive attention to the penetration of the Internet in various social fields.So it is very meaningful to deeply understand the impact of the Internet on people's subjective well-being in order to promote the well-being of people and the construction of a harmonious society.Therefore,based on the perspective of micro survey data,this paper scientifically demonstrates the impact of the Internet on residents' subjective well-being in order to provide reference for decision makers.Based on the 2015 Chinese General Social Survey data,this paper uses the Ordinary Least Square and Ordered Probit model to make a regression analysis on Internet use and residents' subjective well-being,and uses two stage least square and Conditional Mixed Process to study the possible endogeneity of Internet use.The CMP method is also used to further study the heterogeneity of the influence of Internet use on subjective well-being among residents of different household registrations,genders and regions.Finally,the residents who never use the Internet are regarded as control group and the residents who use the Internet are treated as treatment group.Counterfactual framework constructed by Propensity Score Matching to correct the possible bias of the Internet affecting residents' happiness can investigate whether the use of the Internet has a stable and consistent positive effect on the subjective well-being of residents.The main findings are as follows:(1)Internet significantly improves the subjective well-being of residents;(2)In terms of household registration,compared with urban residents,the Internet has a greater effect on the improvement of rural residents' happiness;In terms of gender,compared with male residents,the Internet has a greater effect on the happiness of female residents;In terms of region,the Internet has a greater impact on the well-being of residents in the central and western regions than in the eastern region;In general,the effect of Internet use on happiness will decrease with the increase of age,which is more obvious in rural residents,female residents and residents in the central and Western regions.Finally,based on the theoretical and empirical research results,this paper proposes policy recommendations such as reducing the cost of Internet access for residents,strengthening Internet supervision and conducting Internet training.