农户薪柴消费的理论模型及实证研究

农户薪柴消费变化对室内空气质量、农村生态环境建设影响重大,论文构建了山区农户薪柴消费的理论模型,以重庆市典型区1015份农户调查数据为例,运用Tobit模型分析了农户人均薪柴消费量的影响因素。研究表明:农户家庭能源消费中,商品能源和新能源的比重逐步增大,但薪柴依旧是农户普遍使用的能源类型,且消费量占总能源消费量的比重高;通过降低农业劳动力比重和提高非农工资水平两种途径,非农就业能显著降低农户人均薪柴消费量;家庭电器数量增多、其他收入(政府补贴、亲戚帮扶等)增加、及替代能源(液化气、沼气、煤炭等)可获得性增强也能显著降低农户人均薪柴消费量,而户主年龄大、人均牲畜数量多及房屋离集市距离远的农户家庭的人均薪柴消费量高。提出了加快薪柴替代的措施。

The factors influencing rural household firewood consumption: a theoretical model and empirical research of a typical area in Chongqing Municipality

Recently, energy consumption in rural areas of China is shifting from traditional natural energy to high-quality commercial energy and renewable energy; this shift may help to reduce the ecological stressors of rural areas. Nonetheless, the process of firewood substitution is relatively slow in some mountainous areas of China. Existing studies are focused on the key factors that influence rural households in the choice of energy resources, although it is still unclear what drives the households'' decision-making on energy resources. For example, there is a significant controversy regarding the effect that the off-farm employment has on firewood substitution. Furthermore, existing household models are not suitable for the mountainous areas of China, though these models can simulate energy consumption decisions of a rural household and are helpful for elucidation of the relationship between firewood consumption behavior and off-farm employment. Chongqing Municipality is located in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and the rural households there typically use firewood as their main energy resource. Firewood consumption, however, has a negative effect on the already fragile ecological environment in the region. Besides, firewood collection contradicts the policy of forest conservation. Therefore, firewood substitution is a hot area of research because understanding what/how various factors affect firewood substitution is necessary for policy-making on forest conservation. To meet this challenge, we built an inseparable household model to simulate the balance of labor allocation and energy consumption in a rural household, taking into account the shadow price of off-farm employment, firewood collection, and leisure. Tools of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) were utilized in this study, in accordance with field surveys of 1015 households in the "two wings" region of Chongqing Municipality. A Tobit model was then used to conduct both qualitative and quantitative analyses on the factors influencing firewood consumption per capita in 2011 to test the hypothesis proposed by the household model. Our results show that 1) Rural households gradually increased their use of high-quality commercial energy and renewable energy during 2003-2011. Nevertheless, due to the vast supplies, firewood is still the widely used energy resource, where the percentage of households using firewood is 91.43% and the consumption of firewood per capita was 794.97 kg consumed energy (kgce) in 2011. 2) Off-farm employment significantly reduced firewood consumption per capita via rural labor migration and the improvement of off-farm wages. 3) Other variables also have significant effects on firewood consumption per capita. For instance, among the statistically significant factors are the age of the household head, the livestock number per capita, and distance to market; these factors positively affect firewood consumption per capita. In contrast, the number of household appliances, other income (e.g., government subsidies and support from relatives), and accessible biogas have negative effects. 4) The Wulong County has a negative impact on firewood consumption per capita due to the biogas policy, and so does the Wushan County (due to rich coal resources). We propose several targeted strategies for acceleration of firewood substitution according to existing research; these strategies include improvement of off-farm wages to speed up the transfer of rural labor to off-farm employment, completion of the social security system to improve the purchasing power among the elderly for the use of high-quality commercial energy and renewable energy, increasing the subsidies for electricity access, and promotion of renewable energy.