Peer Effects in Housing Size in Rural China

Tianjiao Li, Changchun Feng, Hao Xi and Yongpei Guo
Additional contact information
Tianjiao Li: College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Changchun Feng: College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Hao Xi: College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Yongpei Guo: College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: In recent decades, rural China has witnessed a housing construction boom. In order to control the rapid growth of rural housing, both central and local governments have established quantitative restrictions on the floor numbers and total housing area; however, these have been relatively ineffective. Current research to explain this rapid growth in rural housing tends to consider independent household behavior, while social interactions among villagers are neglected. Therefore, the aim of this article is to examine the existence of peer effects in the housing size of villagers and whether they differ among different regions to better understand the influence of social interactions on individual housing behaviors, especially in the context of rural China. A spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances (SARAR) was used to analyze data from the 2014 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The results confirm that villagers’ peer effects do exist, indicating that rural households build housing not only to satisfy their dwelling needs but also to keep up with the other villagers’ housing size. Moreover, there are regional disparities in terms of peer effects in rural housing size. Among the three regional parts, the undeveloped region in the western parts showed the largest peer effects. Therefore, local governments, especially from the underdeveloped region, should pay attention to the villagers’ inner motivations behind housing behavior.

Keywords: rural housing; peer effect; regional disparity; SARAR model; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/2/172/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/2/172/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:2:p:172-:d:730318

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().