A Studyon the Effect of Differences in Consumption between Urban and Rural Areas on the Resource-Environment in China

Differences in economic development and consumption level between urban and rural areas in China are obvious,leading to a vastly varying resource-environment characterized by consumption per capita.Investigating the effect of the consumption between urban and rural areas on the resource-environment may therefore be helpful for address problems of inequity and promoting harmonious development between urban and rural areas.This paper aims to examine the effect of the difference in consumption between urban and rural residents on the resource-environment during the period 1957 to 2005 by per capita consumption expenditure in combination with the unit person method and a constructed consumption model.Results are shown as follows.During the period of 1957-2005,the impact intensity of urban residents on the resource-environment changed from 1.064 unit persons to 6.63 unit persons.In contrast,that of rural residents changed from 0.343 unit persons to 2.347 unit persons.At present,per capita environmental load was found to be roughly 6-7 persons’environmental pressure in the 1950s.The impact intensity of one urban resident was approximately equal to that of three rural residents.The impact intensity of rural residents on the resource-environment in 2005 was generally equal to that of urban residents in 1986.It was also found that in 1957,the impact of urban residents on the resource-environment was estimated to be 105.88×106 unit persons,while it was around 3 726.91× 106 unit persons in 2005,increased by 34.2 times.In the meantime,per capita impact of rural residents on the resource-environment increased from 187.52×106 unit persons to 1 749.62×106 unit persons on the whole,increased by 8.33 times.In 1957,the impact of urban residents on the resource-environment basically accounted for 36.09%,while that of rural residents was 63.91%. Up to the year 1965,the percentage of the former slightly decreased to 34.37%,while the latter 65.63%was still the highest within the whole study period.Since then,the former gradually increased to 68.05%in the year 2005,while the latter showed a decreasing trend up to 31.95%.The impact of the difference in consumption between urban and rural residents on the resource-environment maintained steady during the period 1994-1996.In addition,the impact of rural residents on the resource-environment was a major contributor before 1994,whereas that of urban residents has become a major contributor since 1997.