学术论坛第168期，总第354期
演讲人：冯净冰师资博士后（复旦大学）
时 间：2019年3月6日（周三）14:00-16:00
地 点：上海大学宝山校区（东区）经管大楼 520会议室
演讲题目：Media Reports and Self-protection Behavior in China
主 办：上海大学经济学院
上海大学经济学院青联会
演讲简介：
This paper is among the first to evaluate the impact of government media control on households’ welfare by analyzing their self-protection behavior. By constructing a unique data set of 379 Chinese newspaper reports of 38 severe water pollution events between 2004 and 2009 and merging it with the Urban Households Survey data, we find that in polluted areas, news reports on pollution increase households’ self-protection behavior, which is measured by bottled water consumption, even after controlling the effect of pollution occurrence. Specifically, each water pollution report by party newspapers lowers local households’ share of bottled water consumption in food consumption by 0.113‰ while non-party newspapers do not have significant impact on households’ self-protection consumption. We also find that, instead of party newspaper readership, accuracy of information about water quality provided by party newspapers, households’ access to Internet and households’ trust in official media are possible explanations. However, media control policies in China limit party newspapers’ coverage on critical news such as water pollution. We believe that due to lack of full coverage information of those important issues, consumers suffer from severe welfare losses, as their ability to optimally response and protect themselves from potential risks is undermined by the censorship.
演讲人简介：
冯净冰，复旦大学和耶鲁大学联合培养博士，复旦大学经济学院师资博士后。研究方向为发展经济学，研究重点包括媒体经济学、城镇化、政府和社会资本合作等。主持教育部人文社科基金项目等2项，代表性研究成果发表在《世界经济》和Applied Economics Letters、Disaster Prevention and Management等权威期刊。