Peer Effects on Academic Performance of High School Students in a County-Level Context of Western China: Empirical Evidence from Large-Scale Social Network Survey

Peer relationships are closely associated with the academic performance of adolescent students. This paper develops an integrated framework taking the peer main effect as the starting point to systematically incorporate the demonstration effect, the within-class network effect, and the cross-class average effect. Using comprehensive network and survey data from high school students in a typical county in western China, this paper employs a network-based identification strategy to reveal robust positive peer effects. The mechanism test shows that the demonstration effect can play a moderating role in peer effects on academic performance, with the network effect being heterogeneous across students and the average effect indicative of a potential role in providing diverse academic information. These findings provide empirical insights into the multifaceted nature of peer dynamics, offering actionable evidence for designing targeted interventions to improve educational outcomes in underdeveloped regions.