Cross-boundary Air Pollution Paper Accepted to Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM)

Recently, the SUL paper coauthored by Rui Du, Ajkel Mino, Jianghao Wang and Siqi Zheng, “Transboundary Vegetation Fire Smoke and Expressed Sentiment: Evidence from Twitter”, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM).

This research is a product of SUL's Indonesia wildfire project conducted 4 years ago (with the support from the MIT Indonesia seed fund). We look into the impact of transboundary wildfire smoke on the real-time sentiment (happiness) of Twitter users in Southeast Asia such as Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Our paper shows that cross-boundary air pollution is the primary channel to reduce people’s happiness. The findings underscore the psychosocial costs and geopolitical tensions associated with cross-border air pollution spillovers from such wildfires.

This paper showcases the research collaboration with MIT Center for Real Estate Asia Real Estate Initiative and Climate and Real Estate Research Consortium!

In addition we thank, Juan Francisco Palacios, Zhengzhen Tan, Yichun Fan and Yuchen Chai for the support.