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Although several studies have explored the relationship between the Internet and elderly individuals, little is known about whether and how the Internet affects elderly individuals’ subjective well-being (SWB) from multiple perspectives. This study examines the effects of the Internet on physical satisfaction and life satisfaction and explores the potential mechanisms by which the Internet produces its effects on elderly individuals. Using nationally representative data from the China General Social Survey (CGSS), this study finds that the Internet has a significant positive impact on physical satisfaction and life satisfaction of the elderly in China. The mechanism analysis shows that the Internet can improve the level of health insurance participation, which we interpret as potential mechanisms through which the Internet positively affects physical satisfaction among elderly individuals. Correspondingly, the Internet affects life satisfaction of elderly individuals by influencing social networks. Further heterogeneity tests find that the effect is stronger for urban areas, male and high human capital samples. This study highlights the important micro effects of the Internet and provides a reference for exploring the mechanism of the Internet affecting SWB.

Electric vehicles are expanding significantly in recent years. Policies have been critical in stimulating the growth of electric vehicle market. This paper focuses on subsidy policies for electric vehicle adoption in a horizontally differentiated goods market. Using a representative consumer model and assuming the duopoly firms compete in a Cournot fashion, we find that the optimal level of subsidies might not fall as a result of the decreasing production cost of electric vehicles. Instead, the subsidy might phase down when the government starts to bring more competition into the electric vehicle industry. This main result goes through irrespective of whether the subsidy is sales volume-based or sales revenue-based. Our numerical findings further suggest that welfare maximizing subsidy declines with an increasing competition among car manufacturers, and sales volume-based subsidy policy is more efficient than sales revenue-based one. In addition, we also find that the subsidy cut would reduce electric vehicle sales, and subsidy policy is responsive to the government’s objective function.

This study is based on 2006–2019 panel data from 282 Chinese cities. Market segmentation and green development performance are empirically investigated to examine their non-linear relationship using static panel, dynamic panel, and dynamic spatial panel models. The results reveal the following: (1) Green development performance is found to have a high degree of temporal and spatial path dependence, exhibiting spatial linkage between cities. (2) Market segmentation stemming from local government protection has a clear inverted U-shaped structure in relationship with the green development performance. (3) Our analysis suggests that the upgrading of industrial structures significantly enhances green development, while factor price distortion inhibits it. The relationship between market segmentation and industrial structure upgrading is also an inverted U-shape. (4) The analysis further reveals that market segmentation has an inverted U-shaped correlation with the green development performance in western, central, and eastern cities. However, the different rates of development of industrial structures within the three regions result in varying degrees of market segmentation according to inflection point values. Moreover, aligned with the theoretical hypothesis of “resource curse,” in resource-based cities (exclusively), market segmentation still affects the green development performance with a significant inverted U-shaped structure.