Feeling the same heat? Urban–rural inequalities in adapting to extreme temperatures via electricity consumption

Abstract

This paper leverages novel high-frequency electricity consumption data to examine whether urban and rural residents in China are adapting unevenly to short-run extreme heat shocks and long-run climate warming. We demonstrate that both urban and rural groups increase their electricity consumption during transient day-to-day extreme heat events, with the former showing significantly stronger responses, thus revealing a notable adaptation inequality. We document the existence of the urban heat island, but its role in explaining the observed urban–rural adaptation disparity is negligible. Instead, the more fundamental urban–rural real income gap, closely tied to adaptive capacity, almost entirely accounts for the observed difference. In the long run, we find that climate warming over the past 5–20 years significantly promotes adaptation strategy in urban and rural groups, but no evident disparity is observed between these groups. Rural residents have experienced higher income growth over the past decade, which enabled them to afford durable adaptive equipment that is on par with that of their urban counterparts.