Air Pollution and Labor Productivity: Insights from Off-work Activities

空气污染与劳动生产率：来自非工作时间活动的洞见

主    讲：张晓昱（宁波诺丁汉大学经济系）

主    持：秦  聪（中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院）

时    间：2025年5月28日14:00-15:30

地    点：立德教学楼11层1133会议室

报告摘要：

This paper examines the impact of air pollution on labor productivity in an indoor production setting within a factory equipped with air purification systems. Utilizing unique production and attendance records from a major manufacturing facility in eastern China, matched with hourly air pollution data from 2018 to 2019, we find that despite high indoor air quality, increased outdoor air pollution reduces labor productivity on the day of exposure. Our empirical analysis offers a novel perspective on the underlying mechanism: air pollution disrupts workers’ off-work activities, leading to insufficient relaxation that subsequently impairs job performance. Compared with day-shift workers, night-shift workers are particularly vulnerable to this effect, as their off-work hours coincide with the daytime, when pollution levels are more perceptible. This mechanism is further supported by worker-level attendance data, which indicates that air pollution leads to delays in workers’ arrival times but does not affect their departure times, reinforcing the hypothesis that insufficient relaxation during off-work hours contributes to productivity losses.

本研究探讨了空气污染对劳动生产率的影响，研究场景为一座配备了空气净化系统的工厂内的室内生产环境。我们利用中国东部一家大型制造企业2018至2019年的生产与出勤记录，并将其与空气污染数据相匹配，发现尽管工厂内部的空气质量较高，户外空气污染的上升仍会在暴露当天降低劳动生产率。我们的实证分析提供了一个新的视角来理解其背后的机制：空气污染干扰了工人的下班时间活动，导致其放松不足，进而影响其工作表现。与日班工人相比，夜班工人对此影响更为敏感，因为他们的下班时间恰逢白天，而白天的污染水平更为明显。这一机制得到了工人层面出勤数据的进一步支持：数据显示，空气污染会导致工人上班迟到，但不会影响其下班时间，这一发现进一步印证了“非工作时间缺乏有效放松”是导致生产率下降的重要原因。

报告人简介：

张晓昱，宁波诺丁汉大学经济系助理教授，研究方向包括公司金融、房地产经济学、制度经济学。学术研究发表在Journal of International Money and Finance, Economic Inquiry, Public Choice等期刊。