Factors Influencing the Settlement Intentions of Chinese Migrants in Cities: An Analysis of Air Quality and Higher Income Opportunity as Predictors

With rapid urbanization, the air pollution issue is becoming an increasingly serious issue given that people are strongly swayed in their location choice to settle down in a growing urban area where most job opportunities have been created. This study investigated the influences of both air quality and income on the settlement intentions of Chinese migrants by using microlevel samples of the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) data from 2017 and the annual average concentration of PM2.5 (particles with diameter ≤ 2.5 μm in the air) to measure a city’s air quality. The results showed that the settlement decisions of Chinese migrants involved a trade-off between income and air quality. Poorer air quality could significantly decrease the settlement intention, while a higher income could significantly increase the settlement intention of Chinese migrants. However, as the migrants’ income opportunity increased at a location, the negative influence of poorer air quality on the settlement intention at that location gradually declined. Specifically, when deciding whether to settle down in cities, the migrants with a non-agricultural “hukou” (household registration) tended to pay more attention to air quality than the migrants with an agricultural “hukou,” and migrants who moved farther away in geographic distance tended to pay more attention to income. It was concluded that the influences of air quality and income on the settlement intentions of the migrants were robust and consistent after using different estimation methods and considering the issue of endogeneity.