Absolute Income,relative Income And Residents' Environmental Concern

Welfare economists believe that economic growth is the pursuit of a society,the process of economic growth is consistent with people's welfare improvement process.In other words,social members are satisfied with higher income levels. However,along with the highly development of modern civilization,the environmental problems have become a growing problem that can not be ignored.Therefore, whether the high-speed economic growth must be at the expense of destruction of the environment,or more conducive to environmental protection has rapidly become the focus of academic controversy.Namely,people are very concerned about whether the economic development and environmental protection can be considered at the same time.Therefore,it is crucial to further explore the relationship between income and the residents' environmental concern.Existing research have been fully realized that income will affect residents' environmental concern,but all of the analysis is from the perspective of absolute income,failed to clarify the relationship between income and residents' environmental concern,namely what is the absolute income or relative income affect residents' environmental concern.This is an obvious defect.Therefore,it is necessary for us to continue to discuss whether the relative income will have a significant impact on residents' environmental concern.Based on the data from Chinese General Social Survey in 2013,this dissertation empirically analyzes the influence of absolute income,especially relative income level on the residents' environmental concern.Considering the imbalance of regional economic development in our country,this dissertation will analyze all the samples in different areas,urban and rural areas and gender respectively.The result shows that if we do not consider the effect of relative income,then absolute income and residents' environmental concern has a significant positive correlation.However,when considering the effect ofrelative income,absolute income does not significantly affect residents' environmental concern,and relative income has a significant positive correlation with environmental concern.The conclusion is the most important difference between this dissertation and the existing literature.In addition,the empirical analysis results also revealed that age,gender,education level,habitat type and other factors may has a significant impact on the environmental concern of the residents.