Effects of objective and subjective environmental pollution on well-being in urban China: A structural equation model approach

Highlights

• Perceived pollution had both direct and indirect negative impacts on well-being.

• Objective environmental pollution had no direct influence on subjective well-being.

• Actual pollution indirectly affected well-being via perceived pollution and health.

• Health played an important mediating role in the effect of pollution on well-being.

Abstract

Environmental pollution has become an increasingly severe problem in recent years and has aroused extensive concern. However, the influences of environmental factors on human well-being, especially their internal paths and causality, have received little research. Using cross-sectional data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) for 2016, together with data on air, water, and solid waste pollution, this study explored the critical paths and causality of the influences of objective (actual) and subjective (perceived) pollution on perceptions of well-being. Perceived pollution had both direct and indirect negative impacts on well-being. Actual pollution indirectly affected well-being by influencing perceptions of health and pollution, but had no direct influence on well-being. Air pollution had a positive association with depression and a negative association with life satisfaction and happiness, while water and solid waste pollution had negligible associations with well-being. The negative impacts of both real and perceived pollution on health are the main ways in which pollution decreases well-being.

Introduction

Rapid urbanization and industrialization have greatly improved the material living conditions of residents in China. However, these developments have also caused serious environmental problems (Li et al., 2016; Ouyang et al., 2006). According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), from 2012 to 2017 there were 2657 environmental emergencies in China, including 592 environmental pollution accidents, of which 561 were pollution of water. In 2013, half of the top ten river systems and 17 of the 31 large freshwater lakes in China were polluted, leaving 280 million people with unsafe drinking water (2014 China Environmental Bulletin). In 2017, 70.7% of prefecture-level cities in China exceeded the standards for urban air pollution set by the 2017 China Environmental Bulletin. The Environmental Performance Index (EPI), produced by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) ranked China as having the most severe air pollution among 175 countries in 2018 (Wendling et al., 2018). Long-term exposure to pollution is a health risk (Giusti, 2009; Tanaka, 2015; Wang and Yang, 2016). Moreover, environmental pollution, such as atmospheric smog, sewage, and garbage, may impact people's perceptual domain and thus affect their well-being (Li et al., 2018).

The effects of environmental pollution on well-being are extensively documented. Many studies have verified that environmental problems such as air pollution (Ferreira et al., 2013; Luechinger, 2010; Zhang et al., 2017), climate change (Kjellstrom and Mcmichael, 2013), environmental disasters (Smyth et al., 2008), waste pollution (Liao, 2009), and noise pollution (Bronzaft, 2004) can reduce people's happiness. Several studies have found that one's subjective assessment of environmental quality is positively associated with one's well-being (Ge et al., 2017; Li et al., 2014; Sulemana et al., 2016). However, few studies have considered the influence of both subjective and objective environmental pollution on well-being. Liao et al. (2015) found that subjective environmental evaluation plays a mediating role in the relationship between objective environment quality and an individual's life satisfaction. However, they only addressed how air quality affects well-being.

Additionally, most existing studies of the influence of environmental pollution on subjective well-being only focus on air pollution. However, according to a survey conducted in Beijing, China, most respondents (74%) believe that water pollution is a more serious problem than air pollution and presents a higher risk to the general pollution (Zhang et al., 2013). In addition to water and air pollution, China also faces severe solid waste pollution. According to statistics from the China Association of Urban Environmental Sanitation, China produces nearly 1 billion tons of garbage every year, and the amount of urban household garbage is increasing at a rate of 5–8% annually. Hence, China is one of the world's leading producers of garbage (Wang et al., 2014). Indeed, water, air, and garbage are prevalent in residents' daily lives and may, thus, affect their well-being.

Well-being is an abstraction that reflects the state of an individual's life (Taşkaya, 2018). There are two general dimensions of subjective well-being: hedonic and eudaimonic happiness (Levinson, 2012). The former emphasizes positive emotions (i.e., the subjective experience of pleasure) while the latter concerns a positive assessment of life (e.g. life satisfaction) (Ge et al., 2017). The majority of existing studies use life satisfaction to measure subjective well-being by asking a single question such as “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays?’’ Deaton and Stone (2013) noted that using the hedonic or eudaimonic approach to measure subjective well-being may lead to drastically different results as they can be influenced by different variables, although the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. To address this concern, the current study considered subjective well-being by combining both its hedonic and eudaimonic aspects.

Environmental pollution can impact subjective well-being in two main ways. First, a polluted environment can stimulate a person's nervous system and brain, which may affect one's physiological and emotional states and, thus, well-being (Orru et al., 2015). For example, people living in regions with serious air pollution have a higher probability of suffering from anxiety and depression (Marques and Lima, 2011). Second, exposure to pollutants can be harmful to human health (Giusti, 2009; Mabahwi et al., 2014; Wang and Yang, 2016), which may decrease life satisfaction and well-being. Numerous studies have verified that objective environmental pollution, subjective environmental pollution, and individual health are all important determinants of subjective well-being (Li et al., 2018; Sulemana et al., 2016; Yuan et al., 2018). However, few studies have quantitatively measured the internal path and causality of pollution on well-being.

There are many factors influencing subjective well-being that create a complex system. There is the potential for internal correlations among the variables that may directly or indirectly affect well-being. Understanding the internal influence path and causality of the various factors affecting happiness is of great significance in designing policies to improve well-being.

Accordingly, the current study established the path and causality of the impact of environmental pollution on subjective well-being (SWB) based on literature review and theoretical analysis. Thereafter, a structural equation model (SEM) was adopted to test the credibility of these causal assumptions. Subjective assessments of environmental pollution, self-rated health status, and other data were obtained from participants in the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), a nation-wide survey conducted in 2016 by Peking University. Objective data on water and solid waste pollution were obtained from the 2017 China Statistical Yearbook on Environment. Air quality data were obtained from the China National Environmental Monitoring Center. Given that environmental pollution is worse in urban areas than in rural areas due to higher rates of industrialization and human activity, this study only considered urban areas.

The current study extends the existing literature in several ways by aiming to: 1) evaluate the combined influence of subjective and objective environmental pollution (air, water, and solid waste pollution) on overall subjective well-being, rather than only considering the impact of a single pollutant; 2) measure subjective well-being by combining its hedonic and eudaimonic components, rather than only focusing on life satisfaction; 3) discern the causality in the relationship between environmental pollution and subjective well-being, rather than only identifying the determinants of well-being.

The remainder of this study is organized as follows. Section 2 constructs the basic framework for the assumed causal relationships between the environmental pollution and subjective well-being, based on a literature review and theoretical analysis. Section 3.1 describes measurement of variables and the data sources used, then Section 3.2 describes the statistical model used (SEM). Section 4 presents the results of the SEM, then Section 5 discusses the main findings, research limitations and directions for future research. Section 6 presents the main conclusions and policy implications.