Study On The Effect Of Residents’ Air Pollution Risk Perception On Subjective Well-being In Harbin

Since the reform and opening up,the rapid industrialization and urbanization process has caused serious air pollution in China.The increasingly severe air pollution problem has become the focus of attention from all walks of life.Serious air pollution has not only caused huge economic losses to China,but also seriously endangered the health of the public,and even further affected the level of individual subjective well-being.Subjective well-being,as an index to measure individual’s self-rated living standard,has been gradually valued by the government and scholars in recent years.Some countries have begun to list the improvement of residents’ subjective well-being as one of the government’s performance indicators,and have issued a series of air quality improvement policies aimed at improving the level of public happiness.The promulgation of these policies also prompted scholars to explore the potential relationship between air pollution and subjective well-being.From the perspective of objective air pollution,most scholars used the concentration of air pollutants to explore the impact of air pollution on subjective well-being.Although these studies confirm the relationship between air pollution and subjective well-being,the results may not be as accurate as those measured from the subjective perspective.Subjective well-being is a subjective concept,which represents an individual’s overall perception of the living conditions in a period of time.From a subjective perspective,analysis using subjective indicators can more accurately reflect an individual’s true thoughts.Although it is more accurate to use subjective indicators to measure the results,few scholars in China have explored the relationship between them from the perspective of subjective air pollution.The "risk society" theory provides a new research idea for us to study the relationship between them.According to the theory,we live in a society with environmental risks caused by rapid industrialization,and these risks are ubiquitous and unavoidable.According to environmental psychology,the environment in which residents live is regarded as a stressor,and the individual’s perception of environmental risks originates from the interaction between the individual and the environment,reflecting the individual’s cognition of the current environment,which will further affect the individual’s other aspect evaluation.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the impact of residents’ air pollution risk perception on subjective well-being,which not only helps the government to understand the public’s current level of risk perception,but also help the government formulate relevant risk communication policies.In view of this,this paper selects Harbin City,Heilongjiang Province,where the air pollution problem is serious,as the research area.Based on the previous research on risk perception,a questionnaire was designed according to the research purpose of this paper,and a face-to-face survey is carried out to the residents of Harbin City.This paper divides air pollution risk perception into four dimensions: risk controllability,risk trust,risk acceptability and risk effect.Using structural equation model and mediation effect analysis explore the effects of different dimensions of air pollution risk perception on subjective well-being,and further explore the potential impact mechanism between different dimensions of air pollution risk perception.In order to further explain the relationship between them,this study introduces air quality concern and air quality satisfaction to expand the model and increase the explanatory power of the model.At the same time,variance analysis was used in this study to further explore the differences of residents’ socio-demographic characteristics in different dimensions of air pollution risk perception.The results show that:(1)The subjective well-being of Harbin residents is in the middle level,there is a lot of room for improvement.Residents’ acceptance of losses caused by air pollution risk is low,while air pollution risk trust and air pollution risk controllability are at the upper-middle level,and residents perceive the highest risk of air pollution.(2)Different social demographic groups have significant differences in air pollution risk effect,risk controllability and risk acceptability,but no significant differences in risk trust.(3)air pollution risk controllability,risk trust and risk acceptability can improve well-being,while risk effect can reduce well-being,and air quality satisfaction plays a mediating role.There are also internal influencing mechanisms among different air pollution risk perceptions.Improving air quality concern can improve residents’ air pollution risk controllability and risk trust.There are two influencing mechanisms for air quality concern to air pollution risk acceptability.(4)Particularly,in areas with poor air quality,risk controllability had a negative association with air quality satisfaction,and higher risk effect corresponded to higher risk controllability degree.This study reveals the potential relationship between air pollution and subjective well-being from a new perspective of risk perception by establishing a multi-dimensional air pollution risk perception and subjective well-being model.According to the research results,this paper puts forward corresponding policy suggestions for policy makers,which will help the government build a happier city.