Effect of Outreach on Financial Sustainability and Profitability of Saving and Credit Cooperatives in Eastern Ethiopia

This study scrutinized the effect of outreach on financial sustainability and profitability of SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia using balanced panel data from 33 SACCOs over the period of 2017-2019. Quantitative approach and explanatory design were employed to realize the stated objective. This study used secondary data sources, mainly audited financial statement of the SACCOs, in the study period. The analysis revealed that SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia are profitable but not financially sustainable. Random effect model results show that gross loan to asset ratio, yield on gross loan portfolio, managerial and operational efficiency has statistically significant and positive effect on the financial sustainability of SACCOs, while average loan size has statistically significant but negative effect. Likewise, gross loan to asset ratio, managerial efficiency, and average loan size has statistically significant and positive effect on the profitability of SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia. However, the portion of women borrowers and number of active borrowers has statistically significant but negative effect on the profitability of the SACCOs in the study area. Finally, the study suggests that increasing the number of borrowing clients and sales volume (loan portfolio) could benefit SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia from economics of scale.

actively involved in creating and managing the demand and supply of loans (Melesse, 2018).
So as mentioned by Relampagos et al. (1990) and cited by Nigusie (2015), in terms of outreach, SACCOs are better than other formal financial institutions. Currently, there are 18,959 primary level SACCOs in Ethiopia, out of which 14,976 have been established in rural areas and 3,983 are in urban areas with a membership of 3,430,655 people out of which 1,358,119 are female and 2,072,536 are male members having 3.29 and 7.91 Billion birr capital and saving, respectively (FCA, 2017). This quantitative increment in number, membership, savings and loan disbursement calls for rigorous investigation of how outreach affects financial sustainability and profitability of SACCOs. SACCOs should be financially sustainable and profitable in order to provide sustainable financial services and contribute for poverty reduction.
Outreach is an indication of how SACCOs penetrate and provide quality financial services, as well as the volume of activities in the designated target society (Lafourcade et al. 2005). Okumu, (2007) described outreach as efforts to extend SACCOs' services to the people who are underserved by other financial institutions mainly banks. Outreach mainly incorporates breadth and depth dimensions, whereas the former one can be explained as the number of clients served and the volume of services delivered, while depth implies the socio-economic level of the clients that financial cooperatives reached (Okumu, 2007). Basically, increasing client outreach widens the financial services that are available to the cooperative members. Sustainability is the ability of a SACCOs to cover its operating and other costs from generated revenue and provide for profit. It is an indicator showing how the SACCOs stay financially viable even if subsidies and financial aids are cut off (Woolcock, 2006). In other words, it is the ability of an organization to meet its goals or target in the long run (Filene, 2011). The financial performance of SACCOs is an important indicator since it shows the sustainability of current outreach and the potential for additional outreach (Ssebaale, 2011 andTurto, 2008).
Theoretically, outreach to the poor and financial sustainability can be potentially either complementary or conflicting (Quayes, 2012). Once the institution becomes financially sustainable, it can wider outreach today, tomorrow and in the future (Frank et al., 2008). Meyer (2002) also noted that outreach and financial sustainability are complementary since the number of clients increases, microfinance institutions (MFIs) enjoy economies of scale and reduce production costs, which help them to become financially sustainable. On the other hand, Hulme and Mosely (1996), as cited by Abinet (2015) argued that there is inverse relationship between outreach and financial sustainability. They argued that higher outreach means higher transaction cost in order to get information about creditworthiness of clients and hence make MFIs financially unsustainable.
Evidence from Southern Tigrai of Ethiopia, Sebhatu (2011) concluded that there is a substantial growth in outreach and improvement of operational self-sufficiency of SACCOs. Toli (2013) examined the SACCOs' financial service in Addis Ababa and indicated that their outreach shows an increasing trend. Melesse (2018) also examined the sustainability and outreach performance of SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia for the year 2016 and conclude that they are financially sustainable and their outreach performance is at moderate level. Based on the simple correlation result of his study, the outreach performance shows a negative and insignificant association with financial self-sufficiency. Saxena and Guntram, (2018) reviewed financial performance of SACCOs in Tanzania, through their outreach and financial sustainability and the results of the study revealed that performance of SACCOs is good in terms of breadth outreach as it is reaching many rural dwellers and the sustainability indexes shows a positive trend approaching to1 implying that the SACCOs moved towards gaining sustainability in financial intermediation. Joseph, (2013) examined sustainability of rural SACCOs in Tanzania, and revealed that 46% of them especially in Eastern and central zone were not sustainable because they accumulated large amount of nonperforming loan (NPL) and they did not issue new loans from 2006-2013. On the other hand, grants to total loans, cost per borrower, NPL to equity influenced the sustainability of rural SACCOs negatively while average loan size and age of SACCOs influenced sustainability positively. Nalusiba, (2019) also investigated the relationship between outreach and sustainability of SACCOs in Uganda and revealed that, sustainability is influenced by the number of borrowers since it provides more interest to the SACCOs, which could increase profitability and boosting sustainability in the long run that result into positive correlation between outreach and sustainability.
Various studies are also conducted on the relationship between outreach and financial sustainability of MFIs for instance; Abinet (2015) scrutinized the relationship between outreach and financial sustainability of those institutions in Ethiopia. He found significant and positive relationship between breadth of outreach, measured as number of active borrowers and gross loan to asset ratio, and financial sustainability and tradeoff between depth of outreach and financial sustainability. As per the findings of Befekadu (2007) on outreach and financial performance, MFIs are operationally sustainable measured in terms of return on asset and equity and the industry's profit performance is improving overtime. Woller and Schreiner (2002) study the relationship between depth of outreach and financial self-sustainability and found positive causation. Paxton (2002) examined the relationship between depth of outreach and financial sustainability of MFIs (in Africa and Latin America) and found strong correlation between outreach and financial sustainability in Latin America and weak correlation in Africa. Cull et al. (2007) based on cross sectional study on MFIs in 49 countries concluded that there is possibility of increasing yield while serving economically active poor and thereby meeting both the social mission and viability.
The most comprehensive study of sustainability (measured by cost efficiency) and depth of outreach (measured by the average loan balance and percentage of women borrowers') trade-off is by Hermes, (2011) using data from 435 MFIs for the period 1997-2007, concluded that outreach is negatively related to sustainability. Although Olivares-Polanco (2005) study also confirms the existence of this trade-off. These findings are however inconsistent with Ayayi and Sene (2010) who shows that outreach and percentage of women among the clientele do not significantly influence the MFIs' financial sustainability. Their findings corroborated with Cull et al., (2007) that shows MFIs can expand outreach without compromising financial sustainability. Okumu (2007) examined the determinants of sustainability and outreach of MFIs in Uganda and indicates that sustainability is negatively and significantly related to the ratio of gross loan outstanding portfolio to total assets. However, Tilahun (2013) reported that financial sustainability is positively and significantly influenced by the ratio of gross loan portfolio to total asset in east Africa. Quayes (2012) studied the depth of outreach and financial sustainability of MFIs (from Mix market) operating in 83 countries and found positive complementary relationship between financial sustainability and depth of outreach. However, Cheminingwa (2013), found depth of outreach was negative and significantly correlated with financial sustainability. On the other hand, breadth of outreach (numbers of borrowers) was found to be insignificantly related with financial sustainability in Kenya.
The literatures reviewed so far revealed that, studies conducted in Ethiopia were focused on the management, trends and determinates of SACCOs from the perspective of outreach and sustainability (Sebhatu, 2011;Toli, 2013 andMelesse, 2018). To the best knowledge of the researcher the effect of outreach on financial sustainability and profitability of SACCOs is not yet studied in Ethiopia. However, there are various studies carried out on the relationship between outreach and sustainability of MFIs in and outside Ethiopia even though there findings are contradictory (Abinet, 2015;Hermes, 2011;Cull et al., 2007;Olivares-Polanco, 2005;Woller andSchreiner, 2002 andPaxton, 2002), which surface an ongoing debate between breadth and depth of outreach for financial viability and sustainability. Therefore, this study seeks to add evidence to the limited empirical studies in the context of Ethiopia by investigating the effect of breadth, cost and depth of outreach and managerial and operational efficiency (control variables) on sustainability and profitability of SACCO's in Eastern Ethiopia.
According to USAID (2006) and Schreiner (2002), there are six aspects of outreach framework: the breadth, depth, length, scope and worth. However, some of these outreach factors may be difficult to measure since they require data that may not be easily available. Thus, this study examined only the effect of breadth, cost and depth of outreach proxies including managerial and operational efficiency (as control variables) on financial sustainability and profitability of SACCOs as shown in the figure 1 below.
Source: Developed based on literatures and from Abinet (2015) Figure 1. Theoretical model on the effect outreach on financial sustainability and profitability.

Research Hypothesis
Based on the empirical and theoretical studies reviewed this study developed and tested the following research hypotheses. Gross loan to asset ratio has positive and statistically significant effect on financial sustainability and profitability. H 3 . Yield on gross loan portfolio has positive and statistically significant effect on financial sustainability and profitability. H 4 . Proportion of women borrowers has positive and statistically significant effect on financial sustainability and profitability. H 5 . Average loan size has positive and statistically significant effect on financial sustainability and profitability. H 6 . Management efficiency has positive and statistically significant effect on financial sustainability and profitability. H 7 . Operational efficiency has positive and statistically significant effect on financial sustainability and profitability.

Materials and Methods
This study attempted to evaluate effect of outreach on financial sustainably and profitability of SACCOs in eastern Ethiopia, particularly at Dire Dawa City Administration and East Hararghe zone. It is densely populated and drought prone part of the country, wherein majority of the people are poor (Melesse, 2018). To this effect, many SACCOs are organized with the support of NGOs and the government to break the poverty cycle.
In light of the research objective, the hypotheses developed and the quantitative nature of the data, this study has employed quantitative approach to investigate the effect of outreach on SACCO's financial sustainability and profitability. Accordingly, it has adopted an explanatory research design to realize the stated objectives. As noted by (Kothari, 2008), explanatory research design examines the cause and effect relationships between dependent and independent variables.
The total populations of SACCOs found and operated in the study area, eastern Ethiopia are 395. However, due to limited capacity of the supervisory body and the SACCOs themselves majority of them have not been audited annually. However, 33 SACCOs were audited for the last three consecutive years from 2017 to 2019, which guaranteed to consider those SACCOs in this study. Thus, the study considered SACCOs operating at least for more than three years and has complete audited financial statements for three consecutive years.
This circumstance implies that the study used a purposive sampling technique when selecting only SACCOs which are active, complete three years of operation and have audited financial statement over the study period since most of the SACCOs in the area are not audited annually.

The Data Type and Source
The study used secondary data collected from annual audited financial statements of sampled SACCOs, which have been collected from concerned government bodies (East Hararghe Zone and Dire Dawa City Administration cooperative promotion office) through document review to increase reliability of the data. The data were strongly balanced panel type, which captured both cross-sectional and time series behaviors.

Methods of Data Analysis
The study used both descriptive statistics and econometric tools to analyze the data and address the predefined objective. The former one includes simple descriptive methods such as: mean, maximum, minimum, standard deviations and other simple statistical tools that enable to better understand the existing situation and analyze the general trends of the data. The study substantiated the descriptive analysis through manipulating econometric models to examine causal relationship between the explanatory and dependent covariates. In this regard, the study employed Random Effect Model to identify the explanatory variables that significantly affecting financial sustainability and profitability of SACCOs.

Definition and Measurements of Variables 3.3.1. Dependent variables
The dependent variables in this study were financial sustainability and profitability of SACCOs, which were measured by financial self-sufficiency (FSS) and return on asset (ROA). The FSS was measured as the ratio of Adjusted Operating Income to Adjusted Operating Expenses, which is the sum of financial, operating and loan loss provision expense. The adjustment was crucial to show the true financial picture of an institution on an unsubsidized basis, where funds would be raised on the commercial market, rather than through donor grants or subsidized capital (Marwa, 2015). Financial sustainable SACCOs are profitable enough to maintain and expand its services without continued injections of subsidies or donor funds (World Bank, 2003). In short, FSS ratio can be computed as follows:-………………… (1) In order to measure profitability of financial institutions different ratios may be used. The commonly used ratios are Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) (Nyamsogoro, 2010;Tucker and Miles, 2004). Due to data limitation, this study used the former one i.e. ROA to measure profitability of SACCOs. Return on Assets (ROA) measures the overall profitability and reflects both the profit margin and how the institution is efficient in using the total assets to generate revenue (Brealey et al., 2006). ROA is calculated as the ratio of the net income to the total assets. …………………………………..………………………… (2)

Independent variables
According to Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) (2010), loan outreach can be assessed by an annual comparative analysis through measurement of several variables including number of active borrowers and gross loan portfolio as a proxy of breadth and average loan balance per borrower and percentage of woman borrowers as a proxy of depth of outreach. Likewise, previous studies (Abinet, 2015;Nara, 2013;Zerai andRani, 2012 andMeyer, 2002) used similar indicators in their framework, for measuring microfinance outreach. Tilahun (2013) and Okomu (2007) were also among others who used gross loan to total asset ratio to measure breadth of outreach. Moreover, Gashaw (2014) and Millson (2013) included yield to gross loan portfolio in their models as cost of outreach indicator. Following this convention, this study also used all the loan outreach indicators including managerial and operational efficiency as a control variable to measure the effect of outreach indicators on financial sustainability and profitability of SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia.
Where, FSS is the Financial Sustainability, ROA is the Return On Asset, NAB is the Number of Active Borrowers (breadth of outreach), GLA is the Gross Loan portfolio to Asset ratio (breadth of outreach), GPY is the Yield on Gross Loan Portfolio (cost of outreach), PWB is the Portion of Women Borrowers (depth of outreach), ALS is the Average Loan Size (depth of outreach), MGE is the Managerial Efficiency (control variable) and OPE is the Operational Efficiency (control variable), i is the i th SACCOs, t is the time period, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 and 7 are the coefficients for each independent variables in the model, is the error term.

Descriptive result
The value greater than 105% for financial sustainability indicates that, SACCOs are financially self-sufficient and the value below this point indicated that they are not self-sufficient (WOCCU, 2011). As indicated in the Table 2, the average value of financial sustainability is 0.69 (69%) which is below the breakeven/threshold level for financial sustainability. The result depicted that, the sample SACCOs in the study period was not financially sustainable and the sector cannot be self-reliant without external assistant like donors and subsidies from the concerned body. Meyer, (2002) argued that many SACCOs have been unsustainable for various reasons, which is a finding against Melesse, (2018) in the same study area on similar issue. The maximum and minimum value of this variable are 1.30 (130%) and 0.15 (15%), respectively (see Table 2). The result shows that, the financial sustainability of sampled SACCOs over the study period ranges from 15% (too much dependence on donation and subsidies) to 130% (financially self-sufficient). Its standard deviation is 0.299 (30%), illustrates the disparity of financial sustainability among sampled SACCOs in the study area.
Return on asset is a ratio of net income and average total asset, which measures the amount of profit generated per birr of investment in assets. The ratio of 10% and above indicates that the SACCOs are profitable and have the capacity to build institutional capital (WOCCU, 2011). According to Table 2, the average value of SACCOs' profitability is 0.76 (76%), which is above the breakeven/threshold level of profitability, which indicates that the sampled SACCOs on average earned a profit of 0.76 cents from one birr invested in their asset during the study period. The maximum value of the return on asset is 1.25 (125%) and the minimum value is 0.19 (19%). This shows that profitable SACCOs earned 1 birr and 25 cents of profit for a birr invested on assets. On the other hand, the least profitable SACCOs earned 19 cents of profit for each birr invested in their assets during the study period. The standard deviation of 0.28 (28%) indicates the disparity of SACCO's profitability performance.  Table 3, the average value of active borrowers served is 4.20 in its log value which is equal to 15,973.5 borrowers in its real value. The MIX benchmark classifies the breadth of outreach as large (greater than 30,000 number of borrowers), medium (10,000-30,000 number of borrowers), and small if less than 10,000 number of borrowers (Bayeh, 2012). Thus, the breadth of outreach for sampled SACCOs in the study area is medium with average borrowers of 15,974 individuals. The maximum and minimum values of this variable are 7.09 and 2.99 (about 12,302,688 and 990 active loan clients), respectively with the standard deviation of 0.738 (about 6). Gross loan portfolio to asset (GLA) measures the amount of asset invested on gross loan portfolio. The higher gross loan to asset ratio indicates most of the institution's funds are invested on client as a loan, which increase outreach to the poor. The average value of this variable is 1.06 (106%), which indicates that sample SACCOs invested 106% of their asset on gross loan portfolio during the study period. The maximum and minimum value of this variable is 2.71 (271%) and 0(0%), respectively with the standard deviation of 0.53(53%) Yield on gross loan portfolio (GPY) indicates the efficiency of SACCOs in generating cash revenue out of its resources. As per the WOCCU's standard, SACCOs are expected to earn at least 10% income on their loan disbursed to their members. Table 3 indicates that sampled SACCOs generate 0.058(5.8%) income from the loan given to the customers during the study period. The result shows that sampled SACCOs are not generating enough amount of income that covers their operating and financial costs. The maximum yield on the gross loan portfolio for this study is 0.1(10%), which is equal to the expected level as to WOCCU's. However, SACCOs in the study area, as they are earning too low rate of return, their sustainability and profitability potential are in question.

Portion of Women Borrowers (PWB)
indicates the percentage of women borrowers to total borrowers. The higher the percentage is, the higher the depth of outreach, wherein SACCOs in this study has an average value of 0.65(65%), which implies that sampled SACCOs in the study area provides 65% of loan to women's members. The maximum and minimum value of this variable is 1(100%) and .071(7.1%), respectively. This shows that some of the sampled SACCOs provide up to 100% of loan to women beneficiaries. Average Loan Size (ALS) shows the average value of 8.69 in its log value equal to 4.92 Million Ethiopian Birr, which is the average loans size of SACCOs to the number of active borrowers during the study period. The maximum and minimum values of this variable are 10.32 and 5.85 in its natural logarithm value which is equal to 20 Billion and 702,101.7 Birr, respectively with the standard deviation value of 0.89 in its natural logarithm implying SACCOs in the sample varying in loan size.
Managerial Efficiency is the ratio of operating income to expense. Based on the descriptive result, the mean value of managerial efficiency is 0.70(70%), which indicates that on average the sampled SACCOs incurred 0.70cents operating costs like salaries, supplies, loan losses, and other administrative costs to generate one birr operating income during the study period. The maximum and minimum value of managerial efficiency is 1.31(1.31%) and 0.19(19%) respectively, with a standard deviation of 0.28. The minimum value shows that managerially efficient SACCOs incurred operating cost of 0.19cent to generate one birr operating income. On the other hand, managerially less efficient SACCOs incurred operating cost of 1birr and 31cents to generate one birr operating income, which result into lose of 31cents. Operational Efficiency is the ratio of cost to income. Based on the descriptive result, the mean value of operational efficiency of SACCOs is 0.96(96%) indicating that on average sampled SACCOs incurred 0.96 cents total cost/expense/ to generate one birr total income/revenue/ during the study period. The maximum value of operating efficiency is 1.71(171%) and the minimum value of 0.59(59%) with a standard deviation of 0.18. The minimum value indicates that operationally efficient SACCOs incurred cost of 0.59cent to generate one birr income. On the other hand, operationally least efficient SACCOs incurred cost of 1birr and 71cents to generate one birr income during the study period.  Table 4 presents the random effect regression results to indentify effect of outreach on financial sustainability of SACCOs in eastern Ethiopia. The variables included in the model explained about 85% of the total variation on financial sustainability which is reasonably a good fit. This implies that the explanatory variables (such as, number of active borrowers, gross loan to asset, yield on gross loan portfolio, percentage of women borrowers, average loan size, operational and managerial efficiency) jointly explained about 85% of the total variation in the financial sustainability.

Regression Result Effect of Outreach on Financial Sustainability (FSS)
The regression result indicates that gross loan to asset, yield on gross loan portfolio, managerial and operational efficiency has statistically significant and positive effect on the financial sustainability of SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia. However, average loan size has statistically significant and negative effect on the financial sustainability of SACCOs as to the model result on Table 4. Gross loan to asset ratio is a proxy for breadth of outreach, which indicates the amount of assets SACCOs investment on gross loan portfolio. The higher gross loan to asset ratio indicates that most of the institution's funds are invested on client as a loan, which enhances outreach to the poor. The model result reveals that gross loan to asset ratio and financial sustainability has positive and statistically significant relationship at 5% significant level. The gross loan portfolio investment is the main source of income for SACCOs, which infers that higher loan disbursed may guarantee better interest revenue and profit, which may secure financial sustainability. The result is consistent with the findings of Abinet, (2015), Tilahun, (2013) and Cull et al., (2007) who reported statistically significant and positive relationship between loan intensity (gross loan to asset ratio) and MFIs financial self sufficiency. However, this result contradicts with findings of Okumu, (2007), who documented a negative causation between loans to asset ratio and MFI's sustainability. Based on the model result on Table 4 it is easy to conclude that the relationship between breadth of outreach as measured by loan intensity and financial sustainability is positive and statistically significant. Yield on gross loan portfolio is a proxy measure for interest rates charged by SACCOs to loan disbursed to clients mostly their members. The result shows that yield and financial sustainability has statistically significant and positive relationship (see Table 4). This implies that when the interest rate on client's loan increases then SACCOs could generate better interest income and financial sustainability could be enhanced. This finding corroborated with Gashaw, (2014), Cull et al., (2007) and Woller and Schreiner, (2002) found statistically significant and positive relationship between financial sustainability and yield from gross loan. They have argued for the possibility of better yield thereby meeting both the social mission and viability given that the clients are economically active poor. As per the result, an increase in yield lead to improved financial sustainability without compromising outreach. A managerial efficiency ratio is a financial ratio designed to measure the efficiency of management in using its assets (working capital or other resources) and managing its liabilities effectively in the short-run. The model result indicates managerial efficiency has positive and statistically significant effect on financial sustainability of SACCOs. It is expected that, when a firm has better managerial efficiency (the lower ratio), the firm is either getting more income with a determined level of resources or incurring less expenses that in turn leads to improved profitability and sustainability of SACCOs (Velery, 2018). The result substantiated with the findings of Habtamu (2012) and Mwaura (2005), the better the management's efficiency in utilizing the available resources the higher the financial performance that results into sustainability of SACCOs. Likewise, Operational Efficiency is another performance measure used as an indicator of management's ability to control the cost and how well SACCOs are reform there operations and takes into account the cost of the input and/or the price of output in maximizing income. The model result on Table 4 indicates that the coefficient of the operational efficiency is positive and statistically significant at 10% significance level. The result shows that minimizing costs would certainly improve SACCO's financial sustainability. This result is consistent with the findings of Melesse, (2018), Marwa, (2015),  and Nyamsogoro, (2010). These all imply that an increment in managerial and operational efficiency (controlling cost) increases the financial sustainability of SACCOs. Average loan size is a proxy for depth of outreach, which indicates the average loan size per the number of borrowers. It is generally perceived, the smaller its size (smaller loans) indicates greater depth of outreach (Cull et al., 2007). However, MFIs offering small size loan with shorter maturity attract high transaction costs, which experiences declining sustainability and profitability (Lupenu and Zeller, 2002). Average loan size has negative and statistically significant effect on financial sustainability of SACCOs as presented on Table 4. This indicates that SACCO's success is associated with smaller loan sizes since it is significantly correlated with the borrower's poverty level (Schreiner, 2002). The result is consistent with the result of Abinet, (2015) and Nyamsogoro, (2010); who argued that MFIs success should be measured based on the depth of their outreach (how many poor clients they are able to reach). However, the result is inconsistent with the finding of Joseph, (2013); Quayes, (2012); Ganka, (2010) and Cull et al., (2007) who conclude profitability relates selling bigger loans sizes, evidence for the strong tradeoff between serving the poor and being financially sustainable. 0.0000 *** and** implies significant at 1 and 5% level of significance, respectively. Source: Own computation, 2020 Effect of Outreach on profitability (ROA) Table 5 presents the random effect regression results to identify the effect of outreach on profitability of SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia. The variables included in the model explained about 64% of the total variation of profitability scores, which is reasonably a good fit. This implies that the explanatory variables (such as, number of active borrowers, gross loan to asset, yield on gross loan portfolio, portion of women borrowers, average loan size, managerial and operational efficiency) jointly explained about 64% of the total variation in the profitability. The regression result of the analysis indicates that gross loan to asset, managerial efficiency and average loan size has statistically significant and positive effect on the profitability of SACCOs. However, proportion of women borrowers and number of active borrowers has statistically significant and negative effect on the profitability of SACCOs as to the model result on Table 5.
The model result shows that gross loan to asset and profitability has positive and statistically significant relationship. The gross loan portfolio is the main source of income to SACCOs as a result; higher loan disbursement would result into better interest revenue and profits. The result is consistent with the findings of Kipesha and Zhang (2013) and Cull et al., (2007) that found gross loan to asset statistically significant variable as determinants of financial performance. However, Tilahun (2013) argues that MFIs risk increases when its loan to asset ratio increases, and profitability may decrease. Based on Table 5 an increase in the ratio of gross loan to asset increases the profitability of SACCOs.
The model result on table 5 indicates that managerial efficiency has positive and statistically significant effect on profitability of SACCOs. The result shows that, the higher the managerial efficiency in utilizing the available resources the higher the profitability. This output corroborated with the findings of Habtamu (2012) and Mwaura (2005) that found a significant and positive relationship between management efficiency and profitability.
Based on the model result, the effect of average loan size is positive and statistically significant at 10% significant level. This indicates that SACCO's profitability is associated with higher loan sizes since larger loan is associated with better cost efficiency and there is nothing to worry about default risk in SACCOs given that it is 100% secure through own saving and members guarantor. The model result is consistent with the findings of Ganka (2010) and Schreiner (2002) argued that SACCOs will be unable to sustain their operations without profits and conclude that profitability strongly related to disbursing larger loans, which was supported by Adhikary and Papachristou (2014) and Paxton (2002) found that a positive relationship with profitability. As per the result, an increase in managerial efficiency and average loan size increases the profitability of SACCOs.
As to the model result on Table 5, portion of women borrowers has negative and statistically significant effect on profitability of SACCOs. This finding is consistent with the findings of Kipesha and Zhang (2013) and Oliveres-polanco (2005) reported negative and significant relationship between percentage of women borrowers and MFIs profitability, but in contradiction with the findings of Adhikary and Papachristou (2014) and Paxton (2002) found that depth of outreach is positively related to profitability. Likewise, number of active borrowers has negative and statistically significant effect on profitability, which is supported by the finding of Cheminingwa (2013) and Ganka (2010) reported a negative relationship between number of borrowers and profitability as inefficiency increases as a result of increased number of borrowers but against with Nalusiba (2019) found increased number of borrowers generates more interest to SACCOs hence increasing profitability and boosting sustainability in the long run. As per a result, an increase in portion of women borrowers and number of active borrowers decrease the profitability of SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia. 0.0000 *** and** implies significant at 1 and 5% level of significance, respectively. Source: Own computation, 2020

Conclusions and Recommendations 5.1. Conclusions
Based on the findings from the descriptive analysis, SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia were profitable but not financially sustainable during the study period. This implies that, SACCOs are not self-reliant without external assistant like donors and subsidies. As per the model result, it is easy to conclude that financial sustainability and profitability of SACCOs best explained by the explanatory variables included in the model. The findings demonstrate that; gross loan to asset, yield on gross loan portfolio, managerial and operational efficiency has statistically significant and positive effect on the financial sustainability, which indicates that an increase in those variables result into a better financial sustainability. However, average loan size has significant negative effect on the financial sustainability of SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia.
Besides, it can be conclude that, gross loan to asset, managerial efficiency and average loan size has significant positive effect on the profitability. However, portion of women borrowers and number of active borrowers has significant negative effect on the profitability of SACCOs in Eastern Ethiopia.
Furthermore, this study also concludes that outreach and financial sustainability and profitability of SACCOs are complimentary since there is no evidence of trade-off between them. Thus, SACCOs should work to achieve both outreach and financial sustainability and profitability at the same time.

Recommendations
Based on the findings, the study forwarded the following operational and policy recommendations It is recommended that SACCOs should augment their self-sufficiency while serving the poor through increasing amounts of asset invested to loan, yield on gross loan, improving their managerial and operational efficiency.
SACCOs have to improve their returns by charging appropriate interest rate on loans to cover operational, financial and other administrative costs, expand its services and utilizing their available resources to the possible maximum level to sustain as alternative financial service provider.
SACCOs should increase gross loan portfolio investment (volume of sale) and decrease the amount of loan size disbursed to serve large number of borrowers to be benefited from the economics of scale since the total cost will be distributed over the large number of borrowers and volumes of outputs that will reduce cost of production. Thus, the higher the loan and number of borrowers enhances the interest revenue and financial sustainability.
SACCOs should also give education and training to members on credit utilization and management in order to increase loan demand and invest the loan into productive area.
SACCOs have to work on improving women members benefit from their service since women traditionally lack access to finance and generally represented among the hard core-poor. Women borrowers have high repayment rates on loans. Thus, the focus on more women clients increases the chances for low repayment rates leads to less default risk, higher profit and hence improved financial sustainability.
SACCOs have to improve their operational and managerial efficiency through providing continuous training and information management committee members and hiring high caliber managers in the field to bring good governance and better financial management to remain competitive, profitable and sustainable.
Finally, all the government bodies in charge of cooperative at various levels should pay great attention through continuously supervising, inspecting, auditing and developing regulatory environment to modernize the financial system and make them financially prudent and viable financial institutions highly contribute for the outreach of financial services for the country.


Climate change in the Chinese mind: An overview of public perceptions at macro and micro levels

This paper summarizes the current literature on public responses to climate change in China. The paper first provides a “macro view” by reviewing what we know about public climate change knowledge, risk perceptions, policy preferences, and behaviors based on large‐scale survey research. The paper also examines what sociodemographic, psychological, and cultural variables – such as age, gender, rural/urban status, and income – can best predict public understanding and responses to climate change. Second, it provides a “micro view” by presenting findings from place‐based and contextualized research projects in China. The review concludes by suggesting next steps to advance the understanding of public engagement with climate change in China.

sources has tripled. In particular, the wind and solar power capacity grew 25 times in China in the decade from 2008 to 2018. Currently, 30% of the country's electricity comes from nonfossil fuels and the carbon intensity was cut by 45.8% between 2005 and 2018. Furthermore, the air quality has improved dramatically as the result of its synergy with climate change governance. The concentrations of fine particular matter (PM2.5) in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has been cut by 40% and carbon intensity by 15-28% from 2013 to 2017. 1 However, China's reputation regarding climate change was not always so promising. For example, a Guardian article published on December 22, 2009 accused China of "wrecking" the Copenhagen Deal. 2 How did China transform from a follower to a "torch-bearer" between 2009 and 2015? (Chao, 2017) Before and even in 2009, the Chinese central government did not place climate change on the priority list of its work. Correspondingly, few media covered this topic, leading to little influence on the general public. In 2009, the United Nation's Fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) witnessed an explosive growth in the Chinese media coverage on climate issues because the conference was almost unanimously described as the last chance for human beings to save the earth. Though COP15 ended in failure, the attention to and debates around climate change percolated back in China, therewith the change of narratives. The central government realized that the country should shift its developmental model from the traditional, high-emission one to the more sustainable, low-emission one. Naturally, the central government started to emphasize the importance of addressing climate change with major policy initiatives, followed by a nation-wide, systematic low carbon transition plan and wide coverage by mainstream mass media (Wang, 2018).
In this paper, we systematically review how Chinese people understand and respond to climate change in various contexts. Though China arguably has different political contexts to countries that are typically surveyed for public opinions, we think the study has strong practical importance because the government tends to design and implement climate policies with references to public opinions. These opinions can be gathered and communicated in the form of internal reference reports ("Neican"), and/or seminars and conferences organized by the government, governmentaffiliated institutions and third parties. The importance and benefits of guaranteeing such bottom-up support has been highlighted in policymaking process in various occasions. For example, the 19th National Congress Report issued in 2017 required the government to adhere to the "people-oriented policy." 3 In the field of climate change, in particular, civil society organizations have been invited to have regular dialogues with the government since 2010. In addition, the State Council executive meeting on September 19, 2012 announced to set up a yearly National Low-Carbon Day, which marked the first national public campaign initiated by the central government in the aspect of climate issues. The annual campaign, facilitating extensive discussions, not only helps the public understand climate change and relevant policies, but also calls for actions by multistakeholders. 4 Beyond the sheer size of China's emissions, this topic is instructive for scholars and policymakers to better understand attitudes and actions towards climate change.
Our review draws mostly from peer-reviewed academic literature, but also includes the "gray literature" from Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), think tanks, survey institutions and governments. The review has two parts. In the first half, we will focus on the large-scale surveys on the public opinions on environment and climate change and explain the corresponding background and context of China when these surveys were conducted. In the second half, we will look into surveys and studies that focus on particular regions or specific populations (e.g., government officials, college students, farmers). By bringing together the "macro" and the "micro" perspectives, we can obtain a comprehensive view on how Chinese people understand climate change.

| THE MACRO VIEW: EVIDENCE FROM LARGE-SCALE ENVIRONMENTAL PUBLIC OPINION SURVEYS
Since the late 1990s, many scholars and research institutions have used surveys to gauge public opinions on environmental issues, including climate change in China. The GlobeScan (Environics) International Environmental Monitor 1998 survey on public perceptions and engagement around climate change is one of the earliest polls of this kind conducted, in which respondents from 30 countries including China were asked whether they believed poor countries should act on human impacts on climate. Three quarters of the respondents in that survey thought poorer countries should be required to take significant actions either along with or after the richer countries, and only 5% otherwise. 5 By 2007, while less than a half of the Chinese thought that global warming was a serious and pressing problem, more than 75% still believed the problem should be addressed, either immediately with significant costs or gradually "by taking steps that are low costs." In this section, we review similar studies claiming to study the Chinese general public. As we will note later, these surveys rarely collected representative samples, thus one should be careful in interpreting their results. These surveys (see Table 1), nonetheless, offered us valuable insights to consider the public opinions in China as a whole, and a benchmark to compare China with other countries in this aspect. We noticed that many general attitude surveys are part of larger cross-national projects. They are almost all conducted by multinational organizations such as GlobalScan, Pew Research Center, Gallup, BBC, and HSBC, especially in the years immediately before and after 2010. These general attitude surveys often focused on a variety of international issues. Questions pertaining to climate typically inquire about the awareness, seriousness, and perceived causes, and effects of climate change/global warming. On the other hand, in recent years, Chinese scholars and researchers have also developed and implemented several national public surveys on climate change. For instance, researchers from the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and Beijing Institute of Technology (CEEP-BIT) conducted a small-scale random sampling survey, which collected 509 valid questionnaires from 21 provinces, 4 autonomous regions and 4 municipality cities in China (Yu et al., 2013). The China Center for Climate Change Communication (China4C) carried out nationally representative surveys in 2012 and 2012 (Wang, Shen, & Jin, 2017), respectively. In the following sections, we will summarize the main results from these large-scale survey projects.

| Climate change beliefs and impacts
1. China has seen a relatively high awareness among the public of climate change in the last decade, and the majority of the public understand that the issue was human caused.
Climate change constitutes a complex phenomenon drawing upon multidisciplinary knowledge-science, economics, society, politics, and ethics-and therefore the awareness of climate change is also multifaceted. Basic climate knowledge can be divided into several general and sometimes overlapping categories: knowledge about how the climate system works; specific knowledge about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to global warming; contextual knowledge placing human-caused global warming in historical and geographic perspective; and practical knowledge that enables individual and collective actions (Leiserowitz, Smith, & Marlon, 2011). Two of the most used questions gauging the climate knowledge in public surveys and related analysis are "is climate change happening?" and "is it caused by human activities?" When Gallup conducted its first comprehensive opinion survey on climate change globally during 2007-2008, about 62% of Chinese respondents said they "know something or great deal about climate change," which was "falling roughly at about the world's average" (Pugliese & Ray, 2009). While the data from the 2012 Climate Asia Survey conducted by BBC Media Action showed that 78% of Chinese respondents thought climate change were happening (Copsey, Hoijtink, Shi, & Whitehead, 2013). Besides China, the survey covered the other six Asia countries. Regards the same question, the highest percentage was obtained by Myanmar (94%), while the awareness level in China was higher than that in Bangladesh (77%), India (58%), Indonesia (74%), Nepal (65%), Pakistan (38%), and Vietnam (74%). When China4C conducted its first national public survey on climate perception in 2012 (China4C, 2012), 93% of the all 4,169 respondents thought that climate change were happening. The latest China4C survey in 2017 showed that 94.4% of the 4,250 respondents thought climate change were happening.
In the China4C's survey in 2012, half of the respondents (55%) knew that climate change were mostly caused by human activities. In the CEEP-BIT's survey in 2013, 85% fairly or strongly agreed that it was human activities caused climate change. In 2017, over two thirds (66%) of them knew it was caused "mostly by human activities." The Chinese public's climate perceptions from 2007 to 2012 were generally of high accuracy, and the awareness level after 2009 has been even higher as shown by various surveys.
2. More Chinese seriously worry about climate change and one of the related findings is that many have experienced some negative climate impact personally.
Questions inquiring Chinese' perceptions of climate risks, such as the immediacy of climate change, the intensity of their concerns, personal tolls of climate change, the most concerned consequence of climate change, were also commonly covered in these surveys.
According to the Pew Research Center's survey in the spring of 2015, the majority said climate change were a serious problem in all 40 surveyed nations, and "a global median of 54%" believed it was very serious. Regarding to the Chinese public, results from several surveys are generally consistent that they seemed to be well aware of the urgency and seriousness of climate change.
GlobalScan has tracked the public perceptions on the "seriousness of climate change" since 1998, which found that Americans' sense of seriousness has "rebounded after steadily declining in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis" and "the trend is mirrored" in China. Specifically, in the GlobalScan Global 2015 21 Country Poll, respondents were surveyed for questions including "How serious is the climate change or global warming, due to the greenhouse effect?" and "What, if anything, do you think is the major cause of these extreme weather patterns?." This survey revealed that 77% of the Chinese respondents thought that climate change is at least "somewhat serious," and 33% thought it was "very serious." The 2012 China4C survey showed that 78% of the 4,169 respondents were either very or somewhat worried about climate change, and 69% said that people in China were already being harmed by climate change. The percentage of those who are either very or somewhat worried slightly increased to 79.8% in the China4C's 2017 national survey, which polled 4,025 respondents residing in 332 prefecture-level administrative units. Respondents who believed that they had already experienced impacts of climate change also increased by 60-75%.
The 2017 survey also challenged the respondents by asking them "what is the first thing that comes to minds when hearing climate change." The most frequently mentioned words included "hot (7.9%)," "haze (6.3%)," and "global warming (6.0%)." Though the answers to this open-ended question varied from person to person, many Chinese respondents tended to associate climate change with the warming environment or air pollution, while others seemed to be confused between climate and weather. However, 80% of those who responded to this question associated a "negative" connotation towards the word/phrase, further demonstrating that the Chinese public not only has high awareness, but also accurately understands that its impacts can be undesirable, which is in line with many people's daily experiences in connection with air pollution and extreme weather disasters in particular.
3. Climate change is one of the major concerns of the Chinese public.
Compared with other environmental and social problems, climate change does not seem to be the priority concern in the United States according to the surveys from Yale Program for Climate Change Communication (YPCCC). The situation was similar in China a few years ago. For example, the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2010 showed that the Chinese public neither thought climate change was as significant as air, water or waste pollution, nor envisioned the former's implications to individuals and families were as severe as others', though 76.6% of respondents believed the rising temperature caused by climate change was at least somewhat harmful (Hong & Fan, 2013).
However, the Chinese became more concerned about climate change in recent years. In the Pew Research Center's Global Attitude Survey conducted in the spring of 2015, 3,649 Chinese respondents were asked whether they consider "global climate change" as a "major threat" to their country from a list of seven international headline topics, including "Global economic instability, ISIS, Iran's nuclear program, Cyber-attacks, Tension with Russia and Territorial disputes with China." The majority of them said climate change was at least "a somewhat serious problem." The 2017 China4C's survey also revealed that over 70% of the Chinese respondents thought the central government should pay particular attention to eight key issues, including air pollution, water pollution, ecosystem protection, health care, climate change, education, economic development, and anti-terrorism. Specifically, on a scale of 1-4, four being the most concerned, the respondents on average regarded the issue of air pollution as being the most important (3.42), followed by water pollution (3.36), ecosystem protection (3.31), healthcare (3.28), and climate change (3.25). What is interesting is that Chinese respondents worried about climate change more than education, economic development and anti-terrorism.

| Individual actions on climate change
Overall, both international and domestic public perception surveys often ask how Chinese respondents will subsequently act on climate change in two behavior categories: people's willingness to pay more for environmental and climate-friendly products and the potential adjustment of lifestyles.
1. The willingness of most of the Chinese public to pay more for climate-friendly products is clear.
The high climate awareness somehow correlates with the Chinese public's willingness to bear costs associated with policy change and to change their lifestyle. About 68% of the Chinese respondents said they were willing to pay 1% of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on climate actions (The World Bank, 2010). The 2012 China4C national survey showed that 87% of the respondents were willing to pay more for energy-efficient and environment-friendly products, among which 17% were willing to pay over 30% more than the market price. In the China4C's 2017 follow-up survey, 73.7% of the respondents were willing to pay more for climate-friendly products. The lower willingness level was generated possibly due to the questions' wording difference, as the awareness of "environmental problems" (2012) was arguably higher than "climate issues" (2017) and the definition of the latter is usually part of the former. A 2018 survey concluded that "Chinese adult's and college students' willingness to pay is over two times larger than that of their US counterparts" (Winden et al., 2018).
2. Most of the Chinese public have realized the importance to adapt to a less carbon intensive lifestyle, but the understanding level varies.
According to the 2010 CGSS data, 55.5% of the Chinese respondents at least sometimes purposely sorted glass bottles, aluminum cans, plastics or newspapers for recycling, and 73.1% at least sometimes intentionally reduced the consumption of household energy and fuel, such as oil, gas and electricity for environmental protection (Hong & Fan, 2013). In the China4C's 2012 survey, it was found that the respondents implemented different countermeasures at a relatively high rate. 37.1% "always" turned off electronic products when not in use, and 50.5% "often" turned off lights when not in use. However, the frequency of waste classification was relatively low. 12.1% of the respondents "always" classified waste and only 21.8% "often" classified waste, together totaling only one third of the all respondents. The 2015 Pew Research Center survey showed that 58% of the Chinese respondents thought "lifestyle changes are necessary to reduce effects of climate change," rather than solely relying on technology to "solve the problem." One low carbon lifestyle measure, shared bike, has gained increasing popularity in China. For example, 46.7% of the respondents had used shared bikes and 92.6% supported "using it as a way of travel." In terms of lifestyle adjustment, in the 2008 HSBC survey questioning whether "respondents already had changed their lifestyle in response to climate change," China scores the highest (56%) among 12 countries and regions, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, China, the Hong Kong SAR, India, Malaysia, and Mexico. In the last 3 years, the Chinese government encouraged households to install rooftop solar photovoltaic panels by allowing electricity generated from solar panels to be sold to the State Grid. It is a relatively new policy which may directly induce lifestyle change of the general public. According to China4C's 2017 survey, 55.6% of the respondents said that they were aware of this policy already that the surplus electricity generated by solar PV can be sold to the State Grid after household/business consumption.
2.3 | Attitude to climate policies 1. The Chinese public strongly supports their government to take more responsibility on tackling climate change.
Many scholars have explored the Chinese' support to their government aiming to address climate change. According to the 2009 World Bank Survey, around 60% of the respondents residing in developing countries felt their government should give climate change a higher priority and the vast majority of the citizens also held their own government was accountable for addressing climate change. Some other surveys indicated that a high percentage of Chinese respondents believed that China should act to address climate change despite also believing that "rich countries should do more." Surveys further showed that 98% of the Chinese thought their country had "a responsibility to deal with climate change" (Kim & Wolinsky-Nahmias, 2014). In CEEP-BIT's survey in 2013, 93% of the respondents agreed that in China, the government should play a leading role in response to climate change. In China4C's 2017 surveys, among the government, environmental NGOs, enterprises/business organizations, the public and the media, respondents generally believed the government should shoulder relatively more responsibilities.
2. The Chinese public strongly supports domestic climate policies.
Regarding domestic policies, a 2016 online survey among 2,086 Chinese internet users showed that the public's support was high for renewable energy, as roughly half the surveyed (51%) preferred alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar, hydrogen, as a way to fulfill the country's future energy demand, while only 24% preferred fossil fuels (Chen et al., 2016). The preference for alternative energy sources is in line with that in other emerging economies, including Brazil, India, South Africa, and Russia (Chen et al., 2016). China4C's 2017 public survey showed that around 90% of the respondents supported China's climate mitigation and adaptation policies. Specifically, 86% either "supported" or "strongly" supported the country in establishing a national carbon emission trading market, and 98.5% supported increasing "the use of clean energy like solar power and wind power." Other policies all enjoy almost unanimous public support, including promoting low-carbon lifestyles, improving energy efficiency, reducing coal consumption, and raising public awareness.
3. The Chinese public strongly supports the international climate cooperation.
Survey reports showed that the Chinese public also highly supported international cooperation on making adaptation and mitigation efforts (Stokes, Wike, & Carle, 2015;Jamelske, Boulter, Jang, Miller, & Han, 2017;Schwirplies, 2018). The GfK SE 2013 survey showed that 54% of the Chinese respondents perceived "previous international agreements to be rather successful or very successful in combating climate change." The percentage was much higher than that in the United States (22%) or Germany (8%). Chinese respondents also tended to believe future international agreements are important and beneficial to all countries . After the historic Paris Agreement was signed, the Chinese public seemed to have even greater faith in international climate agreements. According to the China4C's 2017 survey, 96.3% of the respondents either somewhat supported or strongly supported China's participation in the Paris Agreement and 94% thought that China should stay in the Paris Agreement to honor the commitment even if the U.S. announced that it would withdraw from the Paris Agreement. 96.8% said they supported China's effort to promote international cooperation in addressing climate change.
2.4 | Potential predictors that shape the Chinese public perceptions on climate change Anthropology, sociology, cultural psychology, and behavior decision research in the past three decades often suggested the correlation between human perceptions and the power of individual, social and cultural forces (Weber, 2010).
Recent surveys have further sought to understand the reasons behind disparate public perceptions of climate change between these demographical and social-economical predictors. The results often differed from each other due to their different survey time, methodologies, variable selection, and therefore failed to prove universally applicable correlations in most cases. However, these surveys and analysis still revealed valuable information about how the Chinese public's climate perceptions might vary due to age, gender, cultural values, education, income and rural/urban differences, and they set a starting point and stratified social groups for raising the acceptance of international climate policies.
• Age and gender Age and gender are usually believed to be strong predictors of the public's climate perceptions. For example, a report analyzed data collected from an online survey conducted in 2013, which recruited 516 complete cases in China argued that age is a significant predictor of perceptions of environmental and climate risk to humans because people who were older were more likely to believe that risks to humans were higher than before (Wang, 2017). In contrast, Schwirplies's research in the same year found that in China, age and gender had almost no significant impact on the support of national and international adaptation and mitigation measures. The analysis was drawn from a 2013 survey based on 1,430 respondents in China, who were recruited by employees of GfK China in 11 core regions and invited to participate in the survey in the centrally located test studios. The analysis, however, showed that older Chinese respondents were more likely to be climate change deniers (Schwirplies, 2018).
Many studies include gender only as one of, rather than a primary controlled variable. A 2012 study based on the 2003 CGSS with the Environment Module took a deeper dive to model the interrelated effects of gender, employment status and parental roles with people's environmental knowledge. The results revealed that "in urban China, men in general, regardless of their employment status or parental roles, tended to perceive various environmental issues as modestly more serious than women" (Xiao & Hong, 2012). A more recent article from the same authors, claimed that according to the data in the 2010 Chinese General Social Survey, "in contemporary China women generally are no longer less concerned about the environment than Chinese men, even though women's lower environmental knowledge somewhat hinders their overall levels of environmental concern" (Xiao & Hong, 2017a& Hong, , 2017b. Similar to the result commonly found in the west, if with equal environmental knowledge, "Chinese women are slightly more concerned" (Xiao & Hong, 2017a, 2017b. However, a latest analysis illustrated that men were more inclined to buy climate-friendly products than women (Wang & Gu, 2019).
An analysis concluded that Chinese adults and students had similar likelihoods of acknowledging that climate change is happening. The two age groups' concerns and belief that the environment is the most important issue facing society, and willingness to support and join international climate change agreements were all identical (Winden et al., 2018). The analysis referred to a series of online and random face-to-face surveys conducted in 2013, covering 2,294 adult participants split evenly between residents of Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Xi'an and additional 2,404 students located in Guangzhou (37.8%), Beijing (17.5%), Xi'an (17.4%), Chengdu (17.4%), and Shanghai (11.5%). Neither of the two sample populations were randomly selected instead being arranged through researchers' mutual contacts. Different from many other studies, these survey results showed that variables such as income, age, education and gender were strong predictors of climate change opinions (Carlsson et al., 2012;Duan, Lü, & Li, 2014;Li, Mu, Schiller, & Zheng, 2016;Yang, Zou, Lin, Wu, & Wang, 2014).

• Cultural values
Culture values represent the implicitly or explicitly shared abstract ideas about what is good, right and desirable in a society (Williams, 1970), while worldview is the culturally structured set of assumptions underlying how people perceive and respond to reality (Kraft, 1999). Climate change and its impacts have become a reality to human society for long and undoubtedly, unique social motivation and cultural values can foster different perceptions on it.
A 2016 study probing the impacts of cultural world views argued that "certain cultural worldviews are significantly associated with climate change risk perception, support for climate-friendly policies and climate change mitigation behavior" (Xue, Hine, Marks, Phillips, & Zhao, 2016). The study sample consisting of 515 Mandarin-speaking residents in Beijing, accurately represented the city's gender ratio but overrepresented the population group with university education. The study indicated that "in China, with its long history of top-down regulation and one-party rule, beliefs about individualism and hierarchy appear to be less relevant to environmental risk perceptions. Many accept strict government controls as a given, and do not view environmental problems as a serious threat to the one-party system" (Xue et al., 2016). Similarly, a 2017 study concluded that "communitarian worldview (vs. individualistic)" was positively associated with perceived risks to humans, risks to environment, and stronger policy support (Wang, 2017). A smaller survey comparing U.S.-China college students' motivations in sharing climate change information stated that "psychological collectivism" was a major incentive for Chinese students to spread the word (Yang, Kahlor, & Griffin, 2014).
Additionally, a study pointed out fatalistic beliefs deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture might also shape people's risk responses, as "If fatalists do not believe that they have much control over environmental threats like climate change, they may attempt to downplay the risk to manage their anxiety" (Xue et al., 2016). Other cultural worldviews, such as egalitarian (vs. hierarchical), a stronger future orientation, and more liberal political philosophy can also positively predict the public perceived climate change risks to humans and environment, and attract more support for climate policies (Wang, 2017).

• Education
A 2015 study showed that education level and beliefs about the cause of climate change were frequently the top-ranked predictors of climate change risk perceptions globally, and in China the top predictor was education (Lee, Markowitz, Howe, Ko, & Leiserowitz, 2015). This study, using the data from the 2007 and 2008 Gallup World Poll that surveyed 119 countries on the "relative influence of socio-demographic characteristics, geography, perceived well-being, and beliefs on public climate change awareness and risk perceptions at national scales." The results showed that in China, "education has an independent additional effect on awareness," as basic awareness of climate change increased with the rise in level of education, emblematic of the urban/rural difference (Pugliese & Ray, 2009). A 2013 analysis report, based on the 5,073 respondents from the 2003 CGSS data and its Environment Module, also confirmed that education is "a powerful predictor of environmental concern among the Chinese" (Xiao, Dunlap, & Hong, 2013). Chinese people with a higher education level is not only less likely to be climate deniers, but also seem to show more "acceptance of international mitigation measures" (Schwirplies, 2018).
However, the higher awareness of and concerns for climate change do not necessarily turn into greater willingness to pay for climate change mitigation. As the aforementioned survey showed, Chinese adults and college students had similar willingness after controlling for income and other variables, despite students appear "to be more environmentally conscious/concerned than previous generations" (Winden et al., 2018).
• Income Unsurprisingly, income disparity plays a major role, particularly in determining whether the Chinese public are willing to pay for climate mitigation measures as mentioned in various survey and analysis reports (Carlsson et al., 2012;Duan & Hu, 2014;Kotchen, Boyle, & Leiserowitz, 2013;Li et al., 2016;Yang, Kahlor, & Griffin, 2014). The study on the willingness of Chinese adults and students showed the similar positive effect of income, but "modest in magnitude." An additional CNY 1,000 of household income could raise the willingness to pay by approximately CNY 0.18 and CNY 0.24 for Chinese adults and students per month respectively (Winden et al., 2018). Higher income was also associated with a higher willingness to adapt to climate change (Schwirplies, 2018). Perception-wise individuals with high household income and exposed to more ecological degradation were more likely to have a pro-environmental attitude, according to a 2014 study also using the 2003 CGSS data and its environment module .

• Urban/rural
Many studies acknowledged the urban/rural difference in environmental and/or climate perceptions while trying to uncover the underlying reasons that cause such perception gaps. The 2012 China4C survey discovered that personal experiences in a specific region were likely to determine perceptions on climate change risks and policy support between urban and rural respondents.
However, an analysis based on the data collected from the 2010 CGSS argued that the difference in awareness of environmental issues between rural and urban residents might be caused more by varied information contents and channels, rather than distinctive occupations or personal experiences (Fan & Hong, 2015). Thus, "the methods of effective climate communication need be discussed in light of rural and urban residents' belief and characteristics" (Li, 2015a(Li, , 2015b. Limited education and a lack of access to environmental information in rural regions of China may explain why rural Chinese tend to focus on problems directly relevant to agricultural production and are less concerned about general environmental issues such as "pollution, nature conservation, and global environmental degradation" (Yu, 2014).

• Media use
Results from a recent consumer survey show that access to media contents related to climate and environment (e.g., news and other information) had a positive correlation to climate policy support, while personal experience contributed more to the awareness of risks to humans and the environment (Wang, 2017). A 2012 survey conducted by China4C showed a positive correlation between the number of channels from which respondents can get climate change information, and the level of self-reported climate awareness. Though traditional mass media, especially television, remains the predominant channel of climate change communication in China as shown in the center's 2017 survey, the social media WeChat is the second major source now. This channel shift might lead to the change in the Chinese public's most reliable information source on climate change from research institutions to the government over the past 5 years, as the latter has a greater traditional and social media presence.
In general, macroscale literature gauging the Chinese public perceptions on climate change sheds light on how the issue was understood in the Chinese minds, and what demographic, social-economic and cultural variables might affect their opinions. International survey agencies are pioneers in this field and domestic study groups have been catching up in recent years as well.

| THE MICRO VIEW: EVIDENCE FROM PLACE-BASED AND CONTEXTUALIZED STUDIES
In recent years, there is a growing number of studies that examined perceptions of climate change using the methodology of qualitative, small-sized surveys, and case studies. These in-depth studies often focus on a population, a place, or a media platform. Due to their specificity, they can often bring about contextualized understanding-one that difficult to obtain through large-scale surveys-on how people make sense of climate change in their social environments. In this section, we will review the key studies in four areas, that is, government officials, college students, peripheral China, and media, as well as a few studies that are difficult to categorize.

| Local government officials
There were two surveys which specifically aimed to examine the understanding of climate change among China's provincial government officials. These officials, working in different provincial governments, have taken the responsibility for implementing policies on the ground. In China's top-down political system, provincial-level officials are the vital middle actors to ensure the policies issued by the central government can be carried out locally.
The first paper surveyed 314 officials in the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Shanxi province. About two-third of the respondents believed that climate change had happened at both global and local levels. While about 75% of the respondents correctly chose greenhouse gas effect as a reason for climate change, their knowledge was rather incomplete (Wei et al., 2014). The majority are willing to change their behaviors to protect the climate, yet there is a visible gap between their perceptions and actions.
The other paper focused more specifically on the perception and knowledge of climate change adaptation. The study surveyed 85 officials responsible for climate change adaptation planning in five provinces. The results showed that over 60% of the respondents indicated that warmer temperatures and drought were the most significant forms of impact from climate change (X. Liu & Mu, 2016). The results also indicated that over half the respondents had knowledge of climate change adaptation measures, but the extent of the understanding varied widely by regions and aspects. These decision-making officials expressed their interests in obtaining more knowledge regarding climate change, but the main barrier was a lack of training and learning materials.
The above two studies provided us a glimpse of how Chinese government officials at provincial level view on climate change-they are, to a certain extent, quite similar to the average citizens. Yet, these respondents are representative by no means for their size of a few hundreds. We thus need to interpret the results with caution.

| College students
College students are among the better studied groups in terms of understanding of climate change. Scholars tend to use a comparative framework to contrast students' knowledge in the United States and China. Jamelske and his colleagues  conducted two waves of similar climate change opinion surveys to college students in 2011 and 2013. Both studies showed that, compared to their American counterparts, Chinese college students' held views more similar to the scientific consensus than USA college students. A higher proportion of Chinese students thought climate change was happening and caused by human activities. They were also more personally concerned about the issue. The same research also found that male students were more proactive than females when responding to the message. Besides basic understanding of climate change, Jamelske et al. (2017) investigated the relevant information sharing behaviors among college students in the United States and China. The findings suggested that Chinese students were often driven by social motivation and information seeking activities, less by negative emotions or epistemic motivation.

| Minority groups in China
About 91% of the population in China belongs to the Han group, while the remaining 55 officially recognized minority groups only account for less than 10% of the population, who dominate in the vast areas in western China. In this regard, a number of studies used small-scale surveys to study perception on climate change in the non-Han Chinese communities in Tibet (Bai et al., 2013;Li, Tang, Luo, Di, & Zhang, 2013), Yunnan (Wang & Cao, 2015;Zheng & Byg, 2014), and Xinjiang (Deng, Qin, & Zhang, 2012). As these places are prone to experience the impacts of climate change, the respondents reported their seeing higher temperature (Wei et al., 2014) and increasing occurrence of hailstorm and drought (Jamelske et al., 2013), and extended growing seasons (J. C. E. Liu, 2015, Jamelske et al., 2015. The perception tended to agree with the objective climate records (Jamelske, et al., 2015;Haggard, Yao, & Cai, 2014). Some studies also documented that these communities had already taken steps-such as changing farming patterns or shifting to off-farm work-to adapt to the change they witnessed (T. , Jamelske et al., 2015. This is generally consistent with one other study conducted in Han-majority rural areas in Anhui and Jiangsu. Among the studies focusing on the minority groups in China, one is especially worthy of attention. The study showed that Tibetan villagers viewed climate change as a moral and spiritual issue (Byg & Salick, 2009). When their research was carried out in 2009, the villagers were not aware of the global climate change phenomenon. Instead, they interpreted the change through frameworks based on local cultural and religious beliefs. Some villagers viewed the changing climate as the signs of God's anger to human misconduct, such as intrusion to sacred mountains; others worried that climate change harmed deities' power to protect humans. Research such as this reminded us that the importance to treat climate change not only as a physical phenomenon, but also social, cultural, and even moral and spiritual. Despite of the global nature of climate change, people's perceptions and responses must be understood in the local contexts.
Overall, there are still rare in-depth studies on public understanding of climate change in China. While there is some literature in the areas we covered, some studies already seem to be outdated due to the rapidly changing contemporary China. Many other areas-coastal areas, for example, or populations, such as farmers, teachers, and business communities, seem to be left out from these literatures. We also noticed that most studies were still based on smaller scale surveys. While surveys have multiple strength, we feel qualitative methods such as in-depth interviews and ethnography may help to interpret how climate change is felt, discussed, or even ignored in the Chinese society.  (2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) of China encourages the development of energy saving products and the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020) highlights the importance of building an ecological civilization, which means a combined goal of environmental protection and addressing climate change nationwide. Afterwards, several rigid regulations were released to regulate emission-intensive industries at different levels around China. During this process, the mass media also helped to communicate related policies and information about climate change to the general public. On the other hand, the Chinese public are experiencing extreme climate events more frequently in recent years, including drought, flood, and heatwave. Thus, we conclude that it is the increasing political priorities, greater media coverage and more frequent personal experiences of extreme weather disasters that jointly contributed to the higher awareness and more accurate understanding of the climate facts in China. 2. On the macro level, climate change constitute one of the major concerns of Chinese public, even prior to education, economic development and anti-terrorism. The year 2018 was the 40th anniversary of China's Reform and Opening Up Policy. The policy has benefited the country in many aspects, such as a higher education level, stable economic development, and fewer terrorist attacks. However, severe environmental pollution was, at the same time, resulted from rapid development that solely valued GDP growth and heavily relied on fossil foal. As the Chinese started to conscientiously reflect upon the unsustainable development model, the central government kept up by kicking off national campaigns to address environmental problems, particularly air pollution. The nationwide "Blue-Sky Protection Campaign" in 2018, for example, was initiated by Premier Keqiang Li pledging to "make the sky blue again." Meanwhile, the government highlighted the synergetic value between emission mitigation and environmental protection domestically. In early 2018, the Department of Climate Change was transferred from the National Development and Reforming Committee to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, indicating that the government is determined to deal with both environmental pollution and climate change challenges in a more coordinated manner. 3. Both international and domestic public perception surveys on the macro level showed that Chinese people had relatively high willingness to pay more for environmental and climate-friendly products and the adjustment potential of lifestyles is huge. People started to care about the real cost once they realized that addressing climate change is more than just a slogan but requires concrete actions with everyone's participation. In the last 2 years, the Chinese public were blessed with more opportunities to change lifestyle and act on climate. For example, shared bikes became very popular in cities which encourage more low-carbon transportation utilization. Another example is that more people chose to install the rooftop solar photovoltaic system because the surplus electricity is allowed to be sold to the State Grid and residents can therefore earn some money, which is an effective financial incentive for people to adjust their lifestyle. If in future, the government and business sectors can work together to help the public better understand their carbon footprints and provide more options conducive to cutting emissions of their daily activities, we believe the public would be incentivized to do so. 4. On the macro level, the Chinese public in general strongly support their government to take more responsibility for tackling climate change. Majority of them strongly support domestic policies and international cooperation on various climate adaptation and mitigation measurements. The strong support from the public, in return, facilitated the government to show more leadership in the process of the global climate governance. In particular, after 2015, a bottom-up momentum has emerged among the nonstate actors, for example, private sector, NGOs, and the general public, who have been making efforts to transform the society to a low carbon future together with governments. For example, during the 2016 COP 22 in Marrakesh, a Chinese philanthropist pledged to donate USD 15 million to address climate change. It is the first private donation of this kind worldwide after the Paris Agreement entered into force. 6 Several Chinese philanthropists quickly followed the suit and announced the launch of the Global Climate Change Action initiative during the Climate Action Summit in California in September 2018 to provide even more financial fund to support innovative climate actions. 7 5. Researchers have identified that age, gender, income, education, media use, personal experiences and sociodemographic characteristics are major drivers for the public in forming specific climate change perceptions. It is clear that social media is playing an increasingly important role to shape the climate change perceptions. There are various opinions about the predictability of these indicators and some results are blurred or even conflict with each other when we go deeper to the segmentation research. For instance, one said elder people supported climate policies, and while another survey found that the elder tended to be climate deniers. It is interesting to find that the methodologies of these surveys are often similar, while most of them did not adopt random sampling at the national scale but just covered a few of big cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Chengdu. Another survey admitted that the survey relies on the researchers' mutual contacts. 6. Last but not least, compared with the macro level survey, the micro-scale ones tended to test the climate change perceptions of small targeted groups. Their sampling size is much smaller than the macro-scaled surveys, but they usually get more useful and accurate findings.

| Suggestions and implications for the future studies
From the reviews and analysis above, we can draw the conclusion that both Chinese government and the Chinese public agree that climate change is a priority, which may explain why China is actively becoming a global leader in this field. This final section will try to answer the question: how can we improve the future studies of public climate perceptions in China?
We must bear in mind that the methodologies utilized in many macrolevel public surveys in China are problematic, as they fail to construct representative samplings either by demographically skewing in favor of the urban population, or by nonrandom selection of respondents due to resource and capacity limits. These survey results and the data analysis findings based on them need to be treated with great caution. For example, in the Pew 2006 Survey, the 2,180 probability samples were disproportionately taken in six cities and surrounding rural areas. A decade later, though the Pew 2015 study expanded to 77 Primary Sampling Units of districts, county-level cities and counties in China, the survey data collected from 3,649 interviewees was still disproportionately urban and therefore required weighting to reflect the actual urban/rural distribution in China. On the other hand, due to limited capacity and resources, many domestic surveys relied on the outdated China General Society Survey Data for national scale public perception analysis, which focused more on general environmental issues instead of climate change specifically. Other methodological problems, such as purely relying on the internet-based surveys and convenient sampling approaches, made the results more representative of urban "mass affluent" in China, particularly in years before 2010 when the percentage of internet users was less than 35% of the population.
To date, the methodology of China4C's survey, advised by YPCCC, is more scientific because it better represents the public perceptions on a national scale. Considering the high popularity rate of fixed-line and mobile phones in Mainland China, the survey was a computer-aided phone survey (CATI). Specifically, samples were drawn from 15.4% of the fixedline phones and 84.6% of the mobile phones. The sampling plan is that in light of the 332 prefecture-level administrative units (including 291 prefecture-level cities, 8 regions, 30 autonomous prefectures, and 3 leagues) and 4 municipalities directly under the central government in China, the total population was divided into 336 levels. The sample numbers were assigned to such levels in proportion to population, contributing to proportional sampling. Besides, the proportions of age groups, gender groups, residencies (rural or urban areas), and the ownership of landline and mobile phones are considered to guarantee the samples to be representative. Concretely, the phone numbers of residents were drawn at random by the tail number, and the sampling of landline telephone respondents was supplemented by random selection as well. In total, the number of samples was 4,025 respondents and the confidence level 95% (the margin of error of ±2%).
The perception of climate change is the foundation for making related policies to address climate change and mobilize the whole society to participate in related actions. Hence, the public perception surveys should be conducted regularly at different scale in China. Considering the logistical and other difficulties, it is challenging for international organizations to conduct such nation-wide surveys in China directly. International organizations may either focus on microscale surveys targeting specific groups or cooperate with local organizations for constructing and implementing nationally representative surveys.
The cooperation between China4C and YPCCC is a good example. YPCCC provided sampling and survey methodology to China4C and China4C, as the local think tank in China, implemented the survey at the country level. Afterwards, the two organizations worked together on the U.S.-China comparative research and co-hosted side events at COP18 in Doha, 2012 and COP23 in Bonn, 2017 to release the key findings. The data and findings were quoted by UNFCCC and therefore reached a broader range of international audience.
In future, if scientifically designed surveys on both macro and micro levels in this field can be carried out on a regular basis, researchers will be able to track how Chinese climate change opinions evolve overtime more accurately. While macroscale public surveys provide much valuable insight, their questions are often too broad and findings highly generic. Thus, more in-depth qualitative studies on focus groups are necessary to help researchers better understand how the issue is perceived and how perceptions can evolve over time in China.
Different strategies fit different contexts and purposes at the macro level. For instance, YPCCC conducted national surveys four times a year to test the voters' perception of climate change. The findings were different each time and correlated to the domestic political situations. The China4C used to conduct a macro-scale survey every 5 years in line with the national 5-year planning because the perceptions of climate reality, causes, experiences and policies in China are heavily influenced by the national plan, and the data gathered from the surveys can advise the government on the implementation of the plan.
On the micro level, China needs more in-depth subdivided surveys to learn the perceptions of selected groups of audience. For example, at the city level, the characteristics of the economic development, culture background, and history, and so on. Cities are greatly different in the east, west, middle, north, south and northeast areas of China. Moreover, there are around 40% of Chinese population live in the rural area, but those groups used to be neglected by most of the surveys conducted by international organizations. It is difficult for international organizations to reach these areas, creating opportunities for local researchers. Considering the rapid development of the Chinese society, more regular microscale surveys are necessary to reflect the latest development of climate change perceptions in the Chinese minds.
Last but not least, public perception surveys are one of the strategic approaches for addressing climate change. When designing a survey, researchers need to have a clear understanding of the purpose and the potential role the survey may play in national and global climate policy making and governance. Combating global climate change requires the public to take practical actions. It has become a top priority to mobilize public participation in tackling climate change. To sustain this momentum, further research to bridge the gap between growing public awareness of climate change in China and people's participation in climate actions will assist the country's efforts to honor its commitments under the Paris Agreement and facilitate its transition to a more sustainable future. However, a common challenge for all countries, including China, is how to mobilize public participation, especially to increase the willingness to pay for the climate-friendly products. From the perspective of the public as a consumer, changing the consumption pattern can directly contribute to the realization of the 2 C target laid out by the Paris Agreement. Thus, how to proactively and effectively change public consumption patterns, especially their attitude towards buying climate-friendly products, requires further study.