Competing with clean air: Pollution disclosure and college desirability

Starting in 2013, China’s pollution information disclosure program raised public awareness of air quality. This study seeks to analyze the impact of information disclosure on college desirability. To that end, I assemble a comprehensive dataset on admission scores for all colleges in China for eight years. In an event study setting, I find pollution information increases cutoff scores for colleges in clean cities by 0.3% for the arts track and 0.6% for the science track, equivalent to 20 thousand and 30 thousand high school graduates per year. While first- and second-tier colleges see large and robust effects, third-tier colleges are not affected by this amenity information shock. The effect is more prominent for journalism, economics and environment-related majors. My findings confirm the importance of environmental information and are consistent with people’s avoidance behavior against pollution.