The impact of education level on residents’ carbon consumption in China

As the largest energy consumer in the world, China is facing huge challenges. Although there is a wide range of literature on the efficiency of its carbon emissions, most studies have focused on industrial or agricultural fields, ignoring the important component of carbon emissions from the lives of its residents. This research uses the undesirable slack-based measure dynamic exogenous data envelopment analysis model to calculate the effect of education level on residents’ carbon emission in their daily life. This study explores the efficiencies of economy, education, and environment in 30 provinces of China, offering the following empirical results. Firstly, in most provinces the average annual efficiency and the average efficiency of each indicator have increased after considering the impact of education level. Secondly, before and after considering exogenous variables, the efficiency of carbon emission indicators in both urban and rural areas is the highest in the east region, followed by the west, and the lowest in the central. Thirdly, in the east region the efficiency of carbon emission indicators in cities is higher than that in rural areas, whereas in the central and west regions the efficiency of carbon emission indicators in cities is lower than that in rural areas. Finally, in the east and central regions the increase in the efficiency of rural carbon emission indicators is larger, but the increase in the efficiency of rural carbon emission indicators in the west region is small.