Urban Form and Household Energy Consumption: Evidence from China Panel Data

Compact urban form is of great importance to facilitate low carbon development, while little empirical evidence was found about the impact of urban geometric form on household energy consumption with panel data; this paper uses a multi-time China land cover dataset to calculate the urban form of 253 prefecture-level cities for the years 2000, 2010 and 2020 and examines its impact on urban household energy consumption. We use urban land ruggedness as the instrumental variable for urban form. The results show urban form and household energy consumption are negatively related. The result is robust to several alternative specifications, including measuring the household energy consumption without central heating or controlling extreme weather year effect. Mechanism analysis shows compact geometric form reduces commuting time in larger and medium cities.

Automated summary

This study examines the impact of urban geometric form on household energy consumption and finds a negative relationship between urban form and household energy consumption, which is robust across different specifications.