互联网使用对居民幸福感的影响:基于全国性数据的实证分析（英文）

The Impact of Internet Use on Residents’ Subjective Well-Being:An Empirical Analysis Based on National Data

当前,互联网使用已成为人们日常生活不可缺少的组成部分。互联网使用与居民幸福感之间的关系也日益受到研究者的关注。然而,现有研究对互联网使用与居民幸福感之间的关系存在争议,而且较少对互联网使用影响居民幸福感的机制进行深入探讨。基于2015年中国综合社会调查数据,本文实证分析了互联网使用对居民幸福感的影响。研究发现,是否使用互联网对居民幸福感没有显著的影响,而互联网使用频率显著提升了居民的幸福感。在此基础上,本文从个人收入、人力资本和社会资本效应三种渠道对互联网使用影响居民幸福感的机制进行了验证。研究结论部分地证实了社会资本在互联网使用和居民幸福感之间的中介效应假设,但没有证实个人收入和人力资本的调节效应假设。与以往研究相比,本文有以下三个方面的创新:首先,本文运用最新可得的具有全国代表性的微观数据,能够比较好地反映近年来互联网使用的新态势及其对居民幸福感的影响;其次,本文在已有互联网使用影响居民幸福感研究的基础上,基于调节效应模型和中介效应模型分析了互联网使用影响居民幸福感的具体机制,以弥补已有相关研究对影响机制分析的不足。再次,本文运用双变量有序Probit模型对关键解释变量潜在的内生性问题进行分析,并使用多种模型估计方法进行估计,以获得更为稳健的估计结果。

Internet use has become an indispensable part of people’s daily lives,and the relationship between Internet use and residents’subjective well-being is receiving increasing attention from researchers.However,the existing literature on the relationship between Internet use and residents’subjective well-being is still controversial and inconclusive,and there has been relatively little discussion of the mechanisms by which Internet use affects well-being.On the basis of data from the China General Social Survey 2015(CGSS2015),this paper provides an empirical analysis of the impact of Internet usage on residents’subjective wellbeing.The study finds that while Internet use had no significant impact on the well-being of residents compared to non-use,frequency of Internet usage did significantly improve subjective well-being.On this basis,we tested the mechanisms by which Internet use affects residents’well-being through the three channels of the personal income effect,the human capital effect and the social capital effect.The findings partially verify the hypothesis of the mediating effect of social capital between Internet use and residents’subjective wellbeing,but do not verify the hypothesis of the moderating effect of personal income and human capital.Compared with previous studies,this paper is innovative in the following three ways:it uses the latest available representative national microdata,which is better able to reflect recent Internet usage and its impact on residents’subjective well-being;on the basis of existing research on the impact of Internet usage on residents’well-being,it analyzes the specific mechanisms through which Internet use affects well-being,using the moderating effect model and the mediating effect model to make up for the shortcomings of existing research on the impact mechanism;and it applies the Bioprobit model to deal with the potential endogeneity of key explanatory variables,using a variety of model estimation methods to obtain more robust estimation results.