Cleaner heating choices in northern rural China: Household factors and the dual substitution policy

Household heating is a major contributor to frequent winter haze in northern China. Transition to cleaner household heating is associated with multiple benefits including improved environmental conditions and health of local residents. This study presents an analysis of data from an indoor survey covering 1030 households in 136 villages of Hebi City in the winter of 2018. The main purpose of this study was to reveal the key factors that affect cleaner heating choices under the national pilot program of the dual substitution policy, which targets the replacement of coal heating with gas and electric heating. The survey showed that electric heating is the most popular heating method, and the adoption of cleaner heating rises with income, and energy and device costs may be the major barriers to adopting cleaner heating. Further, multinomial logit regression was used to investigate the household factors and found that income, heating area, energy cost, and education had significant impacts on heating choices. In addition, the gas substitution policy was more effective in promoting the cleaner heating transition than was the electric substitution policy. Results show that more freedom to choose energies and devices, as well as infrastructure for gas supply and centralized heating, is also vital for the adoption of cleaner heating. Our study provides new insights to improve the details of implementation of the dual substitution policy.