The Relationship Between the Actual Level of Air Pollution and Residents’ Concern about Air Pollution: Evidence from Shanghai, China

Daxin Dong, Xiaowei Xu, Wen Xu and Junye Xie
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Daxin Dong: School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China
Xiaowei Xu: School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China
Wen Xu: School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China
Junye Xie: School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 23, 1-18

Abstract: This study explored the relationship between the actual level of air pollution and residents’ concern about air pollution. The actual air pollution level was measured by the air quality index (AQI) reported by environmental monitoring stations, while residents’ concern about air pollution was reflected by the Baidu index using the Internet search engine keywords “Shanghai air quality”. On the basis of the daily data of 2068 days for the city of Shanghai in China over the period between 2 December 2013 and 31 July 2019, a vector autoregression (VAR) model was built for empirical analysis. Estimation results provided three interesting findings. (1) Local residents perceived the deprivation of air quality and expressed their concern on air pollution quickly, within the day on which the air quality index rose. (2) A decline in air quality in another major city, such as Beijing, also raised the concern of Shanghai residents about local air quality. (3) A rise in Shanghai residents’ concern had a beneficial impact on air quality improvement. This study implied that people really cared much about local air quality, and it was beneficial to inform more residents about the situation of local air quality and the risks associated with air pollution.

Keywords: air pollution; public concern; air quality index; Baidu index; Shanghai (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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