Biomass Energy Economics and Rural Livelihood in Sichuan, China

This book presents a study focusing on household biomass energy use and its impacts on livelihoods in rural China. It advances the literature by triangulating the existing econometric approaches to robustly analyze energy using behaviors at the micro level. Based on a developed agricultural household model, it firstly investigates the determinants of household energy choice behaviors by analyzing household revealed and stated preferences. On the production side, it tests the competition between biomass collection and agricultural production by estimating the profit function. And finally, it examines the effects of price changes in exogenous markets on household biomass energy using behaviors by jointly estimating household consumption, production and labor allocation decisions.

Qiu Chen is a Chinese agricultural economist. She received her Master Degree in Management of Agricultural Economy from Sichuan Agricultural University and her Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Bonn.