Rural Household Energy Use and Its Determinants in China: How Important Are Influences of Payment for Ecosystem Services vs. Other Factors?

Citation

Song, Conghe H.; Bilsborrow, Richard E.; Jagger, Pamela; Zhang, Qi; Chen, Xiaodong; & Huang, Qingfeng (2018). Rural Household Energy Use and Its Determinants in China: How Important Are Influences of Payment for Ecosystem Services vs. Other Factors?. Ecological Economics, 145, 148-159.

Abstract

Fuelwood is an essential environmental good for livelihood in rural China. Heavy reliance on fuelwood is associated with numerous negative externalities. Due to decades of rapid economic growth in China, we hypothesize that the increase in rural household income would reduce reliance on fuelwood. Using data from a survey of 481 households conducted in 2014, we examined the effects of two payments for ecosystem services programs, the Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP) and the Ecological Welfare Forest Program (EWFP), on energy use, along with other factors. We found that the CCFP did not significantly affect fuel choice nor the quantity of fuelwood used, but households with more forestland in EWFP were less likely to adopt modern fuels and likely to use more fuelwood. Household per capita annual income was the main factor promoting adoption of modem fuels, while household size was the most important factor determining the quantity of fuelwood used per capita. Overall, the gradually increasing adoption of modern fuels has thus far not resulted in any significant abandonment of fuelwood. Fuelwood remains the dominant fuel across all income groups, suggesting that households in the study area are in the early stages of the energy transition.

URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.028

Reference Type

Journal Article

Year Published

2018

Journal Title

Ecological Economics

Author(s)

Song, Conghe H.
Bilsborrow, Richard E.
Jagger, Pamela
Zhang, Qi
Chen, Xiaodong
Huang, Qingfeng

ORCiD

Jagger - 0000-0001-7148-432X
Bilsborrow - 0000-0002-0053-7356