The Supply and Demand for Green Housing in China: A Micro-Perspective

In order to achieve the goal of sustainable development, Chinese government has been endeavoring to facilitate the development of green buildings by a wide variety of policies in recent years. However, it is the market rather than the government that can stimulate the green building development in the long run. The role of market endogenous power has attracted a lot of attention. Based on the data of green-certified housing during 2008 and 2015 around China, this paper investigates the drivers of green housing market from both the supply and demand sides. The results suggest that in current China, only large enterprises and those listed on exchanges in Mainland China are prone to invest in green housing, and the state-owned enterprises have not taken the lead. From the demand side, the richer and older residents self-selected into the green housing projects, but the residents with higher educational attainment report higher willingness-to-pay for green housing. We also find that the residents know more about the green building certification and the features of green buildings are willing to pay more for green buildings, which implies that we can stimulate the green housing demand by providing more reliable information about green buildings.