Impact of Rural Road Accessibility on Rural Residents'Health Seeking Behavior:Based on the Monthly Data of Villages
Using the rural road connectivity plan and completion status of Ningyuan County in China from 2011 to 2020 as identification strategies,this paper explores the impact of rural road accessibility on rural residents'health seeking behavior by the means of the differences-in-difference based on the data of the medical record of county public hospitals.The results show that:1)Improving the rural road accessibility has increased the number of people seeking medical treatment in county-level public hospitals per 100 people per month by about 1.6.2)The heterogeneous impact of rural road accessibility on rural residents'health seeking behavior is as follows:the number of married rural residents and adult rural residents increased significantly,but the number of rural widows and widowers decreased.It significantly increased the number of non-emergency visits,but significantly reduced the number of emergency visits.3)Rural road accessibility has both short-term and long-term promotion effects on rural residents'health seeking behavior,manifested as the greatest impact on rural residents'health seeking behavior in the second year after the improvement of rural road accessibility,and gradually decreases in the following 3 to 10 years.The results indicate that rural road accessibility not only provides rural residents with more medical choices,but also increases patients'opportunities to utilize high-quality medical resources,and provides new ideas for promoting the equality of access to medical and health services in urban and rural areas.
road accessibilityhealth seeking behavior in countymedical accessibilitydifference-in-difference methodrural residentsheterogeneity
万方数据
