Estimating the Natural Gas Demand Influencing Factors and Tiered Pricing Performances : Evidence from China's Residential Gas Sector

The sustainable production and consumption of natural gas is an essential underpinning for China to achieve its 2030 carbon emission peaking target. To identify the natural gas demand influencing factors and tiered pricing performances, this paper constructs an empirical model to discern various possible demand influencing elements, and utilizes regression discontinuity design to investigate the potential performances of the tiered pricing policy based on the panel data of 30 cities in China from 2008 to 2018, and further estimates the spatial heterogeneity of tiered pricing polices. The findings could provide some recommendations for price reform of China's natural gas utilities