Study on Rural Residents’ Satisfaction with the Clean Energy Heating Program in Northern China—A Case Study of Shandong Province

The Chinese government announced the Clean Energy Heating Program in northern China in 2017, promoting clean energy for residents’ winter heating. The key difficulty of implementing this policy initiative lies in rural areas. This research hence focuses on evaluating the implementation of this policy in rural areas. Rural residents who directly benefit from, and are integrally involved in, the implementation process in Shandong Province were surveyed to evaluate their satisfaction with this policy. In order to identify their satisfaction indicators and obstacle factors, a TOPSIS obstacle model adjusted by entropy weight was developed. An evaluation system of the indicators of residents’ satisfaction with the policy was developed and converted into a questionnaire. The designed questionnaire was distributed to 341 rural residents in Jinan, Zibo and Heze in Shandong province. Data analysis suggests that, at the fiscal subsidies level, supporting infrastructure, technical supports and support organizations are four important factors affecting rural residents’ satisfaction. The key obstacle factors identified include technical support, supporting infrastructure, the operation subsidies level, heating cost, period of subsidies and achieved temperature. Corresponding suggestions for further clean energy heating policy design and implementation in rural areas in northern China are provided.