ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Social-Ecological Urban Systems
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1616579
Stay or Leave?The Impact of Cities' Air Quality on the Settlement Intention of Urban Migrants: Empirical evidence from China
Provisionally accepted
- 1Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China
- 2College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
- 3Macro Agriculture Research Institute, College of Resource and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
- 4School of Public Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
- 5Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
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As a widespread environmental problem, the relationship between the air pollution and the intention of urban migrant populations to stay in cities has been discussed more limited at the micro level. We investigate the effects of air pollution on the willingness of migrant population to settle down by Probit model, based on the data from 2017 to 2018 in China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS). The results of the study show that an increase of 100 units in the AQI leads to a significant decrease of approximately 13.25 percentage points in the settlement intention of urban migrants. This effect exhibits notable heterogeneity, with air pollution having a particularly negative impact on males, married groups, middle-aged and elderly people over 50 years old, those engaged in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, and high-income groups. In addition, this paper further examines the mechanism by which air pollution reduces the willingness of migrants to stay, and finds that air pollution affects the settlement intention mainly by reducing health status, labour time and wage income. Moreover, the urban green coverage can mitigate air pollution's negative impact on migrants' settlement intention. Air pollution not only undermines investment in human capital, but may also be an impediment to sustainable urban development. Therefore, this study can provide a new perspective for urban development and human capital accumulation.
Keywords: Air Pollution, Urban migrant, Settlement intention, Probit model, Mechanism analysis
Received: 24 Apr 2025; Accepted: 28 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Zhang, Gao and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Wei Chen, School of Public Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, 430073, Hubei Province, China
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