The Impact of Indoor Air Quality on Students’ Performance: Evidence from a Field Experiment in China

The adverse impacts of ambient air quality and its associated costs have received substantial public policy attention in the last few decades (Matus et al., 2012; Schlenker and Walker, 2016; Zhang et al., 2017 ; Xie et al., 2016; Maji et al., 2021). However, the health and economic consequences of indoor air quality are largely overlooked. This is astonishing, especially when considering that most countries’ populations spend roughly 90% of their time indoors. This study focuses on school indoor air quality (IAQ). For a primary school student in China, he/she spends nearly six hours at school, and four and half hours in the classroom. We will link the indoor air quality to a student’s academic performance. We use randomized control trial to divide students into groups that receive interventions aimed at improving IAQ. We manage to answer to what extent the IAQ (especially, CO2) affects cognitive performance of students, and what are the possible mechanisms? We believe that the crowded classroom may lead to students being exposed to insufficient oxygen, which can decrease their productivity in studying. In order to uncover the reasons behind this, we ask students to report on their sleep quality, memory, and attention before and after the interventions. We also access information on students’ physical condition.