Abstract

The influences of urbanization on consumption structure from the perspective of general grey relational analysis

Author(s): Zhou Cheng-Rong, Wei Qiu-Feng

The increasing urban population results in great changes of consumption structure of urban and rural residents through increased urbanization, a necessity for the national economic progress. Taking the data from 2002 to 2012 in Guangxi as an example, this paper analyzes the trend of consumption structure and the differences between consumption structure of urban and rural residents with the usage of chart qualitative analysis and general grey correlation analysis. Urbanization has most closely affected both household appliances and service, transportation and communication among urban consumption; and entertainment education and cultural service consumption, housing, transportation and communication among rural consumption. The analysis above indicates that: To begin with, urban-rural residents’ consumption develops at a high speed with the progress of urbanization. Furthermore, with the development of urbanization the proportion of food consumption has descended gradually. Urban-rural consumption structure changes significantly – a shift from food consumption to transportation and communication, rural consumption structure changes to cultural, education and health care. There are obvious differences in the consumption structure of urban and rural residents. According to the conclusions, author gives advice at the end of the article.