Impact Of Off-farm Income On Rural Household Energy Consumption In China

Energy is the lifeblood of the national economy and the material basis for human survival and development.Since the reform and opening up,China ’s economic aggregate has developed rapidly and people’s living quality have improved significantly.Meanwhile,household energy consumption has increased.As an important part of China’s energy,rural energy is not only the basic resource for rural economic development and the living of rural households,but also a guarantee for rural revitalization and agricultural modernization.Looking back on the development of rural energy in China in the past 40 years,the development and utilization of rural energy has achieved remarkable success.Energy supply structure has been optimized,energy quality has been improved and rural energy consumption has shown a trend of diversification.Energy consumption of rural household in most areas is undergoing a conversion process in which commercial energy replaces traditional biomass energy.As of 2015,rural households’ use of commercial energy in China has reached 73.0%,and the structure of commercial energy consumption has been upgraded from low-quality commercial energy such as coal to high-quality commercial energy such as electricity,LPG and natural gas.However,subject to the relatively low income and the lagging development of infrastructure construction,the coexistence of traditional energy and modern energy is still common.Although the penetration rate of clean energy is high,its use is still low.This not only reduces energy efficiency,hinders the use of clean energy,causes ecological pollution and health risks,but also makes China’s energy more dependent on foreign countries.Therefore,rural energy plays an important role in the national energy development and rural revitalization strategy.How to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of rural households’ energy consumption has become an urgent issue.In many related researches on energy consumption of rural households,income has been regarded as an important factor affecting energy consumption.With the continuous deepening of China’s rural economic reforms and the acceleration of urbanization,a large number of rural surplus labors have entered off-farm sectors in towns and cities for employment,which has promoted a substantial increase in income and significant improvements in family welfare.Correspondingly,the contribution rate of off-farm income to the increase in rural households’ income has gradually increased,while the contribution rate of farm income has decreased.The share of off-farm income in the per capita net income of rural households has increased from 15.0% in 1978 to 53.8% in 2016.The increase of off-farm income has a significant impact on the energy consumption of rural households.On the one hand,the increase in off-farm income has improved the living standards of rural households and improved their ability to consume high-quality energy.On the other hand,more frequent contact between rural households and the outside world has also changed their consumption patterns,and the energy consumption preferences have begun to move towards clean and low-carbon.This phenomenon has prompted academia to conduct research on the relationship between off-farm employment and rural households’ energy consumption.However,there are relatively few studies discussing the impact of off-farm income on rural households’ energy consumption from the perspective of changes in income structure,and most studies only analyzed the impact of off-farm income on single-type energy consumption.Considering that off-farm income will have an impact on both the level and the structure of energy consumption,and the characteristics of phases,interaction mechanisms,impacts of different types of energy and the extent of impacts in different regions have not yet been clarified.Therefore,this article takes off-farm income to promote rural energy revolution as the starting point,combines literature research and statistical analysis to analyze the impact of off-farm income on the transformation and upgrading of rural households’ livehood energy in China.This paper strives to explore an energy consumption analysis framework that is in line with China’s national conditions,and provide an effective reference for the formulation of future rural energy consumption guidance and promotion policies.In order to achieve research objectives,the research context developed in this paper is as follows: First,on the basis of defining important concepts and sorting out research progress,this article analyzes the current status and characteristics of off-farm income and rural households’ energy consumption.Secondly,from the perspective of consumer economics,this article summarizes the mechanism of offfarm income affecting rural households’ energy consumption,including the income effect(consumption capacity)and substitution effect(consumption preference).Then,this article uses the panel data of 27 provinces in China from 2007 to 2016 to build a STIRPAT fixed-effect model,and makes empirical analysis of off-farm income affecting low-quality commercial energy consumption and high-quality commercial energy consumption of rural households,including differences in different income groups and regional groups.Finally,based on results of theoretical and empirical research,this article proposes policy recommendations and future research directions on how off-farm income promote rural energy transition.Through analysis,this article draws following main research conclusions:First,the structure of China’s rural households’ income sources has undergone a huge change.Off-farm income has become the main source of income growth for rural households,and the contribution rate of farm income to income growth is gradually decreasing.The proportion of off-farm income in the per capita net income of rural households is increasing from western region to eastern region.Second,the energy consumption structure of rural households in China is experiencing a stepwise increase.Most regions of China are in the stage of energy commercialization.Among them,the livehood energy consumption of rural households in the central and western regions is still dominated by low-quality commercial energy(coal),while the eastern households has been transformed and upgraded to high-quality commercial energy(electricity,LPG and natural gas).Third,off-farm income has a significant effect on rural households’ energy consumption capacity and consumption preference through income effects and substitution effects,and then promotes the green transformation of rural households’ energy consumption structure,including the suppression effect on low-quality commercial energy consumption and the promotion effect on high-quality commercial energy consumption.Fourth,the livehood energy consumption of rural households in China is also affected by education popularization,family size,energy supply infrastructure construction,resource endowment and energy prices.Among them,the increase in education popularization and the improvement of energy infrastructure construction will help rural households to consume high-quality commercial energy,and then promote the optimization of the energy consumption structure.Fifth,effects of off-farm income on the energy consumption of rural households is heterogeneous in different regions and different off-farm income groups.Among them,off-farm income growth has the most obvious promotion effect on rural households’ electricity consumption in the east,and central rural households’ coal consumption has the most significant suppression effect.Off-farm income has the most obvious promotion effect on the electricity consumption of rural households in the highest off-farm income group.Meanwhile,the suppression effect on coal consumption in this group is also the most obvious.The possible innovations in this article are reflected in following aspects:First,from the view of research perspective,previous researches focused on the promotion of net income on rural households’ energy consumption,but did not specifically segment different income sources.This article is based on the urbanization and off-farm employment of rural surplus labor,which focus on analyzing how changes in the income source structure affect rural households’ energy consumption.To this end,this paper analyzes the impact of off-farm income growth on rural households’ energy consumption capacity and consumption preferences by constructing a systemic mechanism formed by income effects and substitution effects.Secondly,from the view of research methods,most of studies on the energy consumption of rural households have analyzed the impact of off-farm income on a single type of energy consumption in a province or region at a micro level.The conclusion has certain regional pertinence,but differences of income structure and energy consumption in different regions are rarely analyzed.This article attempts to use a comparative analysis method at the macro level to explore heterogeneous impacts of off-farm income on low-quality commercial energy consumption and high-quality commercial energy consumption,as well as heterogeneous impacts in different regional and different income groups.