۱- Introduction

۲- Data and characteristics of rural household energy consumption

۳- Methodology

۴- Results and discussion

۵- Conclusions

References

Abstract

For a developing country with a large rural population, to understand the rural households’ energy consumption characteristic and energy consumption determinants for further public policy design is of increasing importance. Therefore, this paper provides a detailed analysis of the characteristics of rural households’ energy consumption. Simultaneously, based on the data of 1472 rural households from the Chinese General Social Survey of 2015, the energy consumption determinants of rural households are estimated by Tobit model. Results reveal that rural households with a healthy and old household head reduce the share of coal consumption, and household labors with an off-farm job and high level of education, and a large household size increase the share of LPG and electricity consumption. The good economic condition of rural households contributes to the reduction of biomass consumption. Given the results, the government should work for poverty reduction, subsidies for modern equipment purchase, policies of effective and renewable energy technologies, and educational investment in rural areas, which may help for a positive transition in energy consumption for rural households.

Introduction

The changes in economic development, the process of urbanization, living standards, and climate have made great contributions to the variation in household energy consumption [1]. Especially in developing countries, rural household energy consumption accounts for a significant proportion of total energy consumption of a country. Moreover, tradition fuels, including agricultural and animal waste, fuelwood, and coal play a dominant role in household energy consumption in the rural area of these countries. For example, 92% of households use biomass in the disregarded villages of Bangladesh [2]; fuelwood is the major energy form in Nepal, accounting for 76.20% of the total energy consumption [3]; biomass energy (natural organic fuels) constitutes a high proportion of total national energy use for rural African [4]. Excessive use of biomass energy lead to environment degeneration [5] and emitting of several air pollutants [6]. Moreover, the increasing use of coal also has a negative impact on the rural environment, because the coal combustion plays a vital role in the carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and total suspended particulates emissions [7]. Therefore, rural households face a series of considerable, interlocking challenges in the coming transition to a low-carbon energy system with the requirement of reducing emission as well as the use of clean and renewable energy [8]. Similar to most of the developing countries, biomass also accounts for a large share of total energy supply (61.4%) and is the type of fuel most commonly used in rural China [9]. As the largest developing country with about 577 million people living in rural areas at the end of 2017, accounting for 41.5% of the total Chinese population [10], understanding the ways of energy use of rural households in China will be of increasing importance [11].