Awareness, perceptions and determinants of urban sustainable development concerns – Evidence from a central province in China

Abstract

Rapid economic growth and urbanization have contributed to increasing concerns around sustainable development in China. Although urban sustainable development is often comprised of environmental, economic, social and governance aspects, most empirical studies on the public perception of sustainability have exclusively focused on the environmental aspect. Using extensive survey data from three representative cities in Henan Province, China, this study is a first endeavor to examine how perceptions of urban sustainability performance and concerns vary by demographic and socio‐economic status of local residents. This study documents that familiarity with sustainable development concepts is positively associated with education, income, party affiliation and personal health of individuals, while negatively correlated with age. In addition, this study has shown that the most severe threats to sustainability as perceived by citizens are air pollution, corruption, income and education inequality, and excessive industrial production. At the same time, economic indicators such as unemployment, poverty and consumerism are considered lesser threats than social inequality or environmental pollution. Furthermore, residents generally view the sustainable development performance of their cities as mediocre. While generally younger residents and residents with higher levels of education tend to be more critical and long‐term residents tend to be more forgiving, results frequently show that concerns and attitudes towards sustainable development by various socio‐demographic groups differ from city to city. This is strong evidence to support independent local policies tailored to the socio‐demographics of each individual city.

Sustainability Understanding and Behaviors across Urban Areas: A Case Study on Istanbul City

“…On the other hand, gender had predictive power only on awareness and perception. While male respondents had greater awareness than females [43], female respondents scored better in perception than males [60]. Contrary to the findings of several studies reporting the association between gender and sustainable behavior [58,61], the results of this study did not indicate any significant relationship.…”

“…Correlation coefficients showed that awareness was better correlated with attitude (0.49) than perception (0.37). Finding a significant correlation between each determinant was an expected outcome from the previous studies of Guo et al [43] and Tran [44]. When it comes to understanding, awareness had the highest correlation (0.86), followed by attitude (0.76) and perception (0.68).…”

Determinants of sustainable development: Evidence from 12 Asian countries

“…As suggested by Mincer () and the World Bank (), there is a log–linear relationship between earnings and years of schooling, which implies that higher human capital results in higher income. Guo et al () sustainable development concepts is positively associated with education. As such, countries that exhibit a negative trend in adjusted net saving Japan might consider improvements in their human capital as a means to increasing their current levels of per capita income.…”

Exploring Urban Sustainability Understanding and Behaviour: A Systematic Review towards a Conceptual Framework

“…However, this result has been criticized considerably and there are several contradictory studies that found older people have more balanced opinions on the environment and growth [95] and behave more sustainably [96]. Moreover, other studies show male individuals to be more knowledgeable about sustainability [97], and those with higher income have been shown to consume more resources-such as electricity and water [98]. In addition, the correlation between higher levels of education and pro-environmental behaviour have been found to be weaker [99].…”