An inverted U-shaped relationship between haze pollution and rural migrants' long-term residence intentions: Theoretical mechanisms and China’s evidence

Abstract

Despite the extensive literature on the effect of air pollution on individual’s well-being, explore the relationship between polluted haze and rural migrants' long-term residence intentions is still limited. The current study fills the gap by investigating the impact of haze pollution on rural migrants' long-term residence intentions in Chinese context. Overall, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the level of haze pollutants and rural migrants' long-term residence intentions. The results still hold when different haze quality indicators and using thermal inversion as the endogeneity variable. Specifically, haze pollution plays its role through two opposite mechanisms: income effect and health effect. When the size of income effect is larger than health effect, rural migrants are inclined to settle down in their host cities, vice versa. In addition, we also find that the effect of haze pollution varies across different population groups and regions.