From smoke to smiles: Quantifying the happiness benefits of household cooking energy transition.

Existing studies that assess the impact of cooking with dirty solid fuels on human beings tend to underestimate the adverse impact on welfare. This paper aims to address this research gap by examining the happiness benefits of transitioning from solid fuel to cleaner alternatives. Using an extensive panel dataset from China, which includes 150,248 observations collected from 43,251 survey respondents interviewed between 2010 and 2018, this study employs various complementary methodologies, such as the fixed-effect model, propensity score matching, and time-varying difference-in-differences, to overcome challenges related to treatment selection bias and unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity. Further, life satisfaction approach is used to evaluate the economic benefits of cooking energy transition. Our findings indicate that switching from firewood to LPG/natural gas/gas can significantly enhance individual subjective well-being (SWB). Although the improvement brought about by electricity is slightly lower than that of LPG/natural gas/gas, it remains substantial. Notably, the positive effect is more pronounced among specific demographic groups, including females, rural residents, and low-income families. Moreover, these well-being improvements can manifest quickly and persist many years before any noticeable enhancements in physical health. This effect further amplifies over time. However, biogas shows no significant effect on SWB. These findings underscore the importance of clean fuels that contribute to increased happiness, as they are more likely to be consistently adopted. Finally, we estimate that the economic benefits of the well-being improvements resulting from the use of LPG/natural gas/gas and electricity range between $5.15 and $5.44 per day.

A strategic analysis of incorporating corporate environmental responsibility into managerial incentive design: a differential game approach.

As corporations' environmental impacts come under greater scrutiny from global financial, regulatory, and societal stakeholders, management scholars have increasingly focused on the role corporate governance plays in undertaking corporate environmental responsibility (CER). This paper combines managerial incentives and CER in a dynamic environment to formulate a differential game model of managerial incentive design in a duopolistic market, investigating whether companies with profit-maximizing interests are motivated to provide their professional managers with incentives related to CER and the impact of such incentives on corporate profitability, social welfare and emissions reduction. The results demonstrate the following: (1) Employing professional managers increases the emissions reduction efforts of firms and giving incentives to professional managers further increases the emissions reduction level of firms. (2) When a firm employs a professional manager and pays him or her a fixed salary, it generates slightly less income than it does when a manager is not employed; however, if the professional manager is given CER-related incentives, the firm's income is greatly increased. (3) As long as professional managers are employed, social welfare increases regardless of whether professional managers are given incentive pay. (4) The emissions reduction of a firm increases with an increase in the income distribution coefficient π1. This paper extends the existing CER decision-making model by considering different managerial incentive designs, providing new insights into CER and enterprise organizational strategy and offering useful policy recommendations and a scientific basis for environmental governance, which is expected to be useful for finding ways to balance economic development and environmental protection.

Evolutionary game model of construction enterprises and construction material manufacturers in the construction and demolition waste resource utilization.

With the continuous advancement of urbanization, a huge amount of construction and demolition waste (CDW) is generated in large-scaled construction activities, which has aggravated the problem of environmental pollution, waste of resources and destruction of city appearance. In the context of waste-free city, the recycling of CDW can reduce environmental pollution and promote the sustainable development of a city. However, only 20-30% of CDW in the world is recycled, showing a low rate of global CDW utilization. In order to improve the utilization rate, this paper selects construction enterprises and construction material manufacturers as main participants, applies evolutionary game theory to construct an evolutionary game model on the two parties' decision-making behaviors in CDW recycling, and uses MATLAB to make a numerical simulation. The aim of the model is to analyze the influence of various factors on the parties' decision-making behavior evolution and propose strategies to promote CDW utilization. The study found that the stable state of the CDW resource utilization system mainly depends on the difference between revenue and costs, the initial strategy, and the strength of the external environment; for the government, a supervision strategy is found to be necessary, and the best supervision level is 0.6. In the early stage of resource utilization of CDW, subsidies to construction material manufacturers should be increased to improve their initial participation; public participation can effectively improve the efficiency of government supervision, and its optimal participation level is greater than or equal to 0.4; under weak supervision, government penalty increases alone cannot prevent construction enterprises from illegally disposing of CDW. Therefore, the greater the difference, the positive the initial strategy, and the stronger the external environment, the more the behavior of the two participants tends to be {participation, use}. The results show that the government should establish effective supervision mechanisms and legal systems, improve supervision hotlines and information platforms, encourage the public to participate in CDW management and supervision, set appropriate rewards and punishments, strengthen supervision and management levels, reduce supervision costs, and ensure the effectiveness of construction management to improve the efficiency of cooperation between construction enterprises and construction material manufacturers.

Measurement and Prediction of Urban Land Traffic Accessibility and Economic Contact Based on GIS: A Case Study of Land Transportation in Shandong Province, China.

As the basic support of regional economic and social development, land transportation is one of the important engines to promote regional development, and its construction and improvement will have an important impact on the regional economic pattern. Based on the road network of Shandong Province, China, in 2020, according to the Medium and Long-term Development Plan of Comprehensive Transportation Network of Shandong Province (2018-2035), this paper uses the GIS network analysis method, weighted average travel time, modified gravity model and other methods to study the land traffic accessibility and economic relation intensity of prefecture-level cities in Shandong Province, China, in 2020 and 2035. The results show that the distribution of land traffic accessibility in Shandong Province, China, shows a certain regional main road pointing characteristic in 2020, and the urban accessibility level gradually decreases along the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway and Jinan-Qingdao high-speed railway to the periphery. In 2035, the land traffic accessibility of Shandong Province, China, will be more spatially distributed as "concentric circles". From 2020 to 2035, the urban land traffic accessibility and the balance of economic contact in Shandong Province, China, will be improved significantly. The research results can provide a theoretical reference for optimizing the traffic network pattern and promoting urban economic contact in Shandong Province, China.

Research on mechanisms to incentivize corporate environmental responsibility based on a differential game approach.

As major polluters, enterprises are expected to behave responsibly toward the natural environment. However, enterprises often do not pay enough attention to the environment and may even be environmentally irresponsible. Encouraging enterprises to actively accept environmental responsibility is the key to solving the problem of environmental pollution. This paper uses a differential game model to study the impact of different governmental incentive mechanisms on corporate environmental responsibility (CER). The results of the study show that independent, noncooperative decision-making by the government and the enterprise is not desirable. If the government provides a monetary incentive to the enterprise or sets a corporate pollution threshold to stimulate enterprises' acceptance of environmental responsibility, environmental quality can be improved. These results lead to useful policy recommendations and a scientific basis for environmental governance, which is expected to be helpful for finding ways to balance economic development and environmental protection in developing countries more generally.

Does Internet Use Affect Medical Decisions among Older Adults in China? Evidence from CHARLS.

BACKGROUND: The rapid growth of the elderly population poses a huge challenge for people to access medical services. The key to get rid of the dilemma is for patients to go firstly to primary medical institutions. Existing studies have identified numerous factors that can affect patients' health institution choice. However, we currently know little about the role of Internet use in the patients' medical decisions. The objective of this study is to explore health-seeking behavior and institution choice under the background of the Internet era from the perspective of older adults, and to analyze whether the Internet could guide patients to the appropriate medical institution so as to accomplish hierarchical treatment. METHODS: The dataset comprises 9416 people aged 45 or above from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS), which, through multistage cluster sampling, was conducted in 2011, 2013, and 2015. Logistic regression, PSM, and FE model are used to estimate the influence of Internet use on the health care decision-making behavior. RESULTS: Internet use has a significant positive impact on the self-treatment of common diseases (ß = 0.05, p < 0.05). In terms of medical institution choices, those who use Internet are more inclined to choose top-level hospitals than community health service institutions to treat common diseases (ß = 0.06, p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The Internet has lowered the obstacles to learning about common ailments, resulting in a substitution impact of self-treatment for hospital care. However, Internet use may aggravate older adults' perception of the risk of disease, which exacerbates the tendency of going to higher-level medical institutions for medical treatment. The finding of the study is useful for further rational planning and utilization of the Internet in order to guide patients to appropriate medical institution, which helps to improve the efficiency of the overall medical and health services.

How does environmental knowledge translate into pro-environmental behaviors?: The mediating role of environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions.

This paper explores how general environmental knowledge shapes environmental attitudes, behavioral intentions, and pro-environmental behaviors in relation to the surrounding environment. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with bootstrapping estimation was conducted to assess a causal chain from environmental knowledge to pro-environmental behaviors with a nationally representative sample of 2824 respondents from China. The results show that environmental knowledge has a significant positive effect on environmental attitudes, environmental attitudes have a significant positive effect on environmental behavioral intentions and pro-environmental behaviors, and environmental behavioral intentions have a significant positive effect on pro-environmental behaviors. We also concluded that although environmental knowledge has no significant direct effects on pro-environmental behaviors, it is a crucial distal variable whose significant effect is fully mediated by environmental attitudes and environmental behavioral intentions. The results of the multigroup SEM showed that the moderating effect of external context on the relationship between environmental behavioral intentions and pro-environmental behaviors and various demographic variables (e.g., gender, urban vs. rural residence, education level, and region) have diverse effects on the model in this study.

A game theoretical model for location of terror response facilities under capacitated resources.

This paper is concerned with the effect of capacity constraints on the locations of terror response facilities. We assume that the state has limited resources, and multiple facilities may be involved in the response until the demand is satisfied consequently. We formulate a leader-follower game model between the state and the terrorist and prove the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium. An integer linear programming is proposed to obtain the equilibrium results when the facility number is fixed. The problem is demonstrated by a case study of the 19 districts of Shanghai, China.