The Impact Of Rural Centralized Residence On Household Electricity Expenditure

To coordinate urban and rural development,optimize the layout of urban and rural construction land,China’s State Council proposed the rural-urban land quota linking policy in 2004.Meanwhile,government attaches great importance to sorting out rural residential areas and guiding farmers to live in a centralized way.At present,24 provinces(districts and cities)have implemented rural centralized residence(RCR)policy.With the rapid development of rural economy,the living standards of rural families are steadily improving.As a result,the pattern of living consumption has changed greatly,and the demands of families for living goods are also increasing and diversified.What’s more,electricity expenditure,which is regarded as one of the vital factors impacting farmers’ health,human capital,living standards and environment,is very important in the development of agriculture,rural areas and farmers.Therefore,this study discussed the impact of RCR upon households’ electricity expenditure,enriched the research of RCR assessment,provided empirical evidence for solving energy problems in rural areas as well.Based on a dataset including 3519 households in Chengdu,Deyang,Meishan,Ya’an and Aba Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province,this study estimated the effect of RCR on the household electricity expenditure.What’s more,we addressed the the endogeneity issues of RCR by using instrumental variable(IV)approach as well as adding cross-prefecture matched-villages group fixed effects.Econometric results showed that RCR has a significant positive effect on electricity expenditure.In addition,we also found that increasing in electricity expense is affordable because of the households’ income promoted by RCR far exceeding that of electricity expenditures.Further analyses confirmed that RCR drives farmers’ electricity expense by promoting total income.Meanwhile,RCR made more family members choose to work locally,which increases the size of permanent household population,furtherly improves the electricity expenditure.What’s more,RCRhousehold energy availability was significantly improved through the improvement of energy supply facilities compared with that of non-RCR families,which also makes contribution to the increasing electricity expense.Besides,results revealed that the impact of RCR on electricity expenditure is much more significant when the head of household is female or labor ratio in a family is less than 50% or age of the head of household is younger than 60.Thus,in the process of RCR’s implementation,government should strongly encourage such families to embrace RCR policy.Above all,this study enriched researches about RCR policy by using IV approach and controlling cross-prefecture matched-villages group fixed effects.Empirical results confirmed that electricity expenditure of RCR households significantly increases compared to that of non-RCR households.Furthermore,the increase of electricity expense makes contribution to improving living standards and labor efficiency of rural families as well as promoting the construction of rural ecological civilization.Therefore,encouraging rural residents to choose RCR will help promote the economic development of rural areas and further narrow the gap between urban and rural areas.