China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 98

Subjective and Objective Air Quality in Urban China
city, 700 residents were interviewed,
except for megacities like Beijing and
Shanghai, in which 1,000 residents were
surveyed. Data on the government information
disclosure of air quality (environmental
transparency) are from
IPE’s independent assessment (Lorentzen,
Landry, and Yasuda 2014). As IPE
did not cover Haikou, our final number
of observation is 31 cities. In addition,
we collect archival data from the statistics
of MEP to measure air quality and
other city-level variables.
Dependent Variable
One 10-point Likert scale item is used
to gauge the respondents’ subjective
perceptions of air quality. The respondents
were asked to rate their perceptions
of air quality in the cities where
they live. In the survey, 1 refers to the
worst while 10 means the best. Although
single-item measure is one of
the limitations of this study, it is appropriate
to capture respondents’ overall
assessment of air quality. Roughly 50.5
percent of the respondents scored higher
than 6, which is in congruence with
the 2010 MEP citizen survey.
Independent Variables
Prior studies on the effect of air quality
on life satisfaction usually use annual
mean concentration levels or amount
of emission per capita of air pollutants
(e.g., sulfur dioxide, SO 2
) as the key
measures of air pollution (Luechinger
2009; Smyth, Mishra, and Qian 2008).
We measure urban air quality by yearly
averaged pollutant concentration indicators
reported by the MEP. The key air
pollution indicators include SO 2
, nitrogen
dioxide (NO 2
), and particulate matters
(PM 10
), all measured by milligram
per cubic meter (mg/m 3 ). As of 2011,
the data on PM 2.5
were unavailable in
most cities and we cannot assess whether
it correlates with public satisfaction
with air quality.
To take all air pollutants into account,
we also use an umbrella measure
to gauge air quality. We use the proportion
of monitored days of air quality
equal to or above national secondary
standard (grade II) in the whole year
(percent). The MEP classifies cities into
three grades according to the national
air quality standards (air quality index,
AQI), with higher grades (e.g., grade I)
denoting better air quality. The variable
is coded as a dummy, since all sampled
cities are either in the status of grade II
(0) or grade III (1). Air quality fluctuates
seasonally and it is appropriate to
concentrate on the period when we collect
our survey data. We use the average
air pollution measures in the first half
of the year, 1 since the survey was conducted
from April to August 2011.
IPE developed the Urban Air
Quality Information Transparency Index
(AQTI) to rate cities’ performance
in air quality information disclosure
(IPE 2012). The initial version of AQTI
released in 2010 assessed 20 Chinese
cities (e.g., Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou)
and compared their performance
1 MEP, Air quality of key environmental protection cities in the first half year of 2011, July 22, 2011,
http://www.mep.gov.cn/gkml/hbb/bgg/201107/t20110730_215576.htm (accessed January 18,
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