Environmental awareness and household energy saving of Chinese residents: Unity of knowing and doing or easier said than done?

Household energy saving is important for the realization of emission peak, carbon neutrality, and energy security goals in China. However, no conclusion has been reached on whether public environmental awareness can promote household energy saving. There are two major defects in previous studies. One is that they focus on the public intention to save energy rather than the real behavior; the other is that the endogenous problem caused by the measurement bias of environmental awareness is ignored. Based on China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) database, this study selects the change in average monthly household electricity charge and electricity consumption as the proxy variables of energy saving, and introduces the public perception level of social security and government corruption as the instrumental variable of environmental awareness. It is found that improvement of environmental awareness has statistical significance for household energy saving and there is still a lot of room for improvement. This conclusion keeps valid in several robustness tests. Further analysis shows that improvement of environmental awareness is more likely to promote energy saving in rural households, male household heads, and young people; and that education and income have a joint moderating effect on the energy saving effect of environmental awareness.