IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v188y2024ics0301421524001198.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rural household nonagricultural income and energy transition: Evidence from central China

Author

Listed:
  • Ma, Xiaowei
  • Li, Chuandong
  • Kang, Qi
  • Chen, Danni
  • Sun, Qingyu

Abstract

Promoting China's energy transition is essential for achieving low-carbon development and achieving the nation's carbon neutrality target. Previous research has primarily focused on industrial production energy consumption transition paths, and rural household energy consumption has rarely been investigated. This study focuses on the impact of nonagricultural income on rural household energy consumption in the Huang-Huai-Hai region using questionnaire data, examining the contribution of rural households' nonagricultural income to the energy consumption transition (i.e., from dirty energy sources such as firewood to clean energy sources such as liquified petroleum gas (LPG)). Instrumental variable two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) estimation and IV-tobit models are applied to solve potential endogeneity problems. The results demonstrate that nonagricultural income can promote rural households' energy structure transformation, increase spending on clean energy such as LPG and electricity, and decrease expenditure on dirty energy sources such as coal and firewood. Further examination reveals that nonagricultural income can enable rural households to afford modern necessities and transition to cleaner, more efficient energy. The study proposes promoting rural energy structure transformation to boost sustainable development and increase nonagricultural income. Strengthening skills training, encouraging more off-farm employment, and other approaches will diversify rural households' income.

Suggested Citation

  • Ma, Xiaowei & Li, Chuandong & Kang, Qi & Chen, Danni & Sun, Qingyu, 2024. "Rural household nonagricultural income and energy transition: Evidence from central China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:188:y:2024:i:c:s0301421524001198
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114099
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421524001198
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114099?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Démurger, Sylvie & Wang, Xiaoqian, 2016. "Remittances and expenditure patterns of the left behinds in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 177-190.
    2. Babatunde, Raphael O. & Qaim, Matin, 2010. "Impact of off-farm income on food security and nutrition in Nigeria," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 303-311, August.
    3. Han, Myat Su & Cudjoe, Dan, 2020. "Determinants of energy-saving behavior of urban residents: Evidence from Myanmar," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    4. van der Kroon, Bianca & Brouwer, Roy & van Beukering, Pieter J.H., 2013. "The energy ladder: Theoretical myth or empirical truth? Results from a meta-analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 504-513.
    5. Chen, Le & Heerink, Nico & van den Berg, Marrit, 2006. "Energy consumption in rural China: A household model for three villages in Jiangxi Province," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 407-420, June.
    6. Ye, Yuxiang & Koch, Steven F. & Zhang, Jiangfeng, 2018. "Determinants of household electricity consumption in South Africa," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 120-133.
    7. Gigi Foster & Charlene M. Kalenkoski, 2013. "Tobit or OLS? An empirical evaluation under different diary window lengths," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(20), pages 2994-3010, July.
    8. Rahut, Dil Bahadur & Behera, Bhagirath & Ali, Akhter, 2016. "Household energy choice and consumption intensity: Empirical evidence from Bhutan," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 993-1009.
    9. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-529, October.
    10. Wang, Chengchao & Yang, Yusheng & Zhang, Yaoqi, 2012. "Rural household livelihood change, fuelwood substitution, and hilly ecosystem restoration: Evidence from China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 2475-2482.
    11. Liu, Yuan & Chen, Jiahui & Zhao, Lutao & Liao, Hua, 2023. "Rural photovoltaic projects substantially prompt household energy transition: Evidence from China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    12. Tesfaye Woldeyohanes & Thomas Heckelei & Yves Surry, 2017. "Effect of off-farm income on smallholder commercialization: panel evidence from rural households in Ethiopia," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 48(2), pages 207-218, March.
    13. Hori, Shiro & Kondo, Kayoko & Nogata, Daisuke & Ben, Han, 2013. "The determinants of household energy-saving behavior: Survey and comparison in five major Asian cities," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 354-362.
    14. Mishra, Ashok K. & Moss, Charles B., 2013. "Modeling the effect of off-farm income on farmland values: A quantile regression approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 361-368.
    15. Nan Zhou & Nina Khanna & Wei Feng & Jing Ke & Mark Levine, 2018. "Scenarios of energy efficiency and CO2 emissions reduction potential in the buildings sector in China to year 2050," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 3(11), pages 978-984, November.
    16. Dedehouanou, Sènakpon Fidèle Ange & Araar, Abdelkrim & Ousseini, Aichatou & Harouna, Abdoulaziz Laouali & Jabir, Maimounata, 2018. "Spillovers from off-farm self-employment opportunities in rural Niger," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 428-442.
    17. Sun, Chuanwang & Ouyang, Xiaoling, 2016. "Price and expenditure elasticities of residential energy demand during urbanization: An empirical analysis based on the household-level survey data in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 56-63.
    18. Ashok K. Mishra & Kh. A. Mottaleb & Samarendu Mohanty, 2015. "Impact of off-farm income on food expenditures in rural Bangladesh: an unconditional quantile regression approach," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 46(2), pages 139-148, March.
    19. Jingchao, Zhang & Kotani, Koji, 2012. "The determinants of household energy demand in rural Beijing: Can environmentally friendly technologies be effective?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 381-388.
    20. Song, Conghe & Bilsborrow, Richard & Jagger, Pamela & Zhang, Qi & Chen, Xiaodong & Huang, Qingfeng, 2018. "Rural Household Energy Use and Its Determinants in China: How Important Are Influences of Payment for Ecosystem Services vs. Other Factors?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 148-159.
    21. Wanglin Ma & Awudu Abdulai & Chunbo Ma, 2018. "The effects of off†farm work on fertilizer and pesticide expenditures in China," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 573-591, May.
    22. Pothitou, Mary & Hanna, Richard F. & Chalvatzis, Konstantinos J., 2016. "Environmental knowledge, pro-environmental behaviour and energy savings in households: An empirical study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 1217-1229.
    23. Liu, Wenling & Spaargaren, Gert & Heerink, Nico & Mol, Arthur P.J. & Wang, Can, 2013. "Energy consumption practices of rural households in north China: Basic characteristics and potential for low carbon development," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 128-138.
    24. Chang, Huayi & Heerink, Nico & Zhang, Junbiao & He, Ke, 2024. "Off-farm employment and household clean energy transition in rural China: A study based on a gender perspective," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    25. Zhang, Huaquan & Yang, Fan & Chandio, Abbas Ali & Liu, Jing & Twumasi, Martinson Ankrah & Ozturk, Ilhan, 2023. "Assessing the effects of internet technology use on rural households' cooking energy consumption: Evidence from China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 284(C).
    26. Ma, Wanglin & Zhou, Xiaoshi & Renwick, Alan, 2019. "Impact of off-farm income on household energy expenditures in China: Implications for rural energy transition," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 248-258.
    27. Wang, Na & Fu, Xiaodong & Wang, Shaobin, 2022. "Spatial-temporal variation and coupling analysis of residential energy consumption and economic growth in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    28. He, Ke & Zhang, Junbiao & Wang, Anbang & Chang, Huayi, 2020. "Rural households’ perceived value of energy utilization of crop residues: A case study from China," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 286-295.
    29. Wang, H. & Ang, B.W. & Su, Bin, 2017. "Assessing drivers of economy-wide energy use and emissions: IDA versus SDA," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 585-599.
    30. Babatunde, Raphael O. & Qaim, Matin, 2010. "Impact of Off-farm Income on Food Security and Nutrition in Nigeria," 2010 AAAE Third Conference/AEASA 48th Conference, September 19-23, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa 97332, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    31. J. Lelieveld & J. S. Evans & M. Fnais & D. Giannadaki & A. Pozzer, 2015. "The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale," Nature, Nature, vol. 525(7569), pages 367-371, September.
    32. Zou, Baoling & Luo, Biliang, 2019. "Rural household energy consumption characteristics and determinants in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 814-823.
    33. Rahut, Dil Bahadur & Behera, Bhagirath & Ali, Akhter, 2017. "Factors determining household use of clean and renewable energy sources for lighting in Sub-Saharan Africa," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 661-672.
    34. Sheng, Yu & Zhao, Yuhan & Zhang, Qian & Dong, Wanlu & Huang, Jikun, 2022. "Boosting rural labor off-farm employment through urban expansion in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    35. Martey, Edward & Etwire, Prince Maxwell & Adusah-Poku, Frank & Akoto, Isaac, 2022. "Off-farm work, cooking energy choice and time poverty in Ghana: An empirical analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ma, Wanglin & Zhou, Xiaoshi & Renwick, Alan, 2019. "Impact of off-farm income on household energy expenditures in China: Implications for rural energy transition," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 248-258.
    2. Martey, Edward & Etwire, Prince Maxwell & Adusah-Poku, Frank & Akoto, Isaac, 2022. "Off-farm work, cooking energy choice and time poverty in Ghana: An empirical analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    3. Liu, Pihui & Han, Chuanfeng & Liu, Xinghua & Teng, Minmin, 2023. "Assessing the effect of nonfarm income on the household cooking energy transition in rural China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 267(C).
    4. Ma, Wanglin & Vatsa, Puneet & Zheng, Hongyun & Rahut, Dil Bahadur, 2022. "Nonfarm employment and consumption diversification in rural China," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 582-598.
    5. Ma, Shaoyue & Man, Hecheng & Li, Xiao & Xu, Xiangbo & Sun, Mingxing & Xie, Minghui & Zhang, Linxiu, 2023. "How nonfarm employment drives the households’ energy transition: Evidence from rural China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 267(C).
    6. Martinson Ankrah Twumasi & Abbas Ali Chandio & Ghulam Raza Sargani & Isaac Asare & Huaquan Zhang, 2022. "Off-Farm Employment and Agricultural Credit Fungibility Nexus in Rural Ghana," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-15, July.
    7. Li, Meng & Jin, Tianyu & Liu, Shenglong & Zhou, Shaojie, 2021. "The cost of clean energy transition in rural China: Evidence based on marginal treatment effects," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    8. Li Huang & Heng Wu & Mi Zhou, 2022. "Implications of Non-Farm Work for Clean Energy Adoption: Evidence from Rural China," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-19, December.
    9. Zheng, Linyi, 2023. "Impact of off-farm employment on cooking fuel choices: Implications for rural-urban transformation in advancing sustainable energy transformation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    10. Chen, Qiu & Liu, Tianbiao, 2017. "Biogas system in rural China: Upgrading from decentralized to centralized?," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 933-944.
    11. Zhu, Xiaodong & Zhu, Zheng & Zhu, Bangzhu & Wang, Ping, 2022. "The determinants of energy choice for household cooking in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    12. Han, Jiashi & Hou, Xiaochao & Zhang, Lei, 2022. "Policy implications of China's rural household coal governance from the perspective of the spillover effect," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    13. Han, Hongyun & Wu, Shu & Zhang, Zhijian, 2018. "Factors underlying rural household energy transition: A case study of China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 234-244.
    14. Shi, Xinjie & Cui, Liu & Huang, Zuhui & Zeng, Pei & Qiu, Tongwei & Fu, Linlin & Jiang, Qiang, 2023. "Impact of internal migration on household energy poverty: Empirical evidence from rural China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 350(C).
    15. Puneet Vatsa & Junpeng Li & Phong Quoc Luu & Julio Cesar Botero‐R, 2023. "Internet use and consumption diversity: Evidence from rural China," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 1287-1308, August.
    16. Yan, Aqian & Luo, Xiaofeng & Zhang, Junbiao & Tang, Lin, 2024. "Does internet use promote clean energy use for cooking by women-headed rural households in China?," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    17. Mondal, Ripon Kumar & Selvanathan, Eliyathamby A & Selvanathan, Saroja, 2020. "The impact of rural nonfarm employment on agricultural input use and productivity in Bangladesh," 2020 Conference (64th), February 12-14, 2020, Perth, Western Australia 305251, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    18. Chen, Feifei & Qiu, Huanguang & Zhang, Jun, 2022. "Energy consumption and income of the poor in rural China: Inference for poverty measures," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    19. Stabridis, Omar & van Gameren, Edwin, 2018. "Exposure to firewood: Consequences for health and labor force participation in Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 382-395.
    20. Zeeshan & Geetilaxmi Mohapatra & Arun Kumar Giri, 2022. "How Farm Household Spends Their Non-farm Incomes in Rural India? Evidence from Longitudinal Data," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(4), pages 1967-1996, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:188:y:2024:i:c:s0301421524001198. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.