How Do Environmental Concerns and Governance Performance Affect Public Environmental Participation: A Case Study of Waste Sorting in Urban China

Abstract

Environmental pollution threatens public health and has become a social concern in recent years. Despite the conditions for public participation in environmental governance have improved considerably, the level of public engagement in government projects still falls short of expectations. Therefore, this article introduced two key variables, hoping to answer the following research question that how environmental concerns and governance performance affect public environmental participation. Through principal component analysis of the data from the “Survey of Chinese Urban Residents’ Attitudes toward Environmental Protection”, the findings of this article are as follows: First, public environmental concerns have no significant impact on their environmental engagement; second, the improvement of residents’ confidence in the government performance of environmental management reduces their willingness to participate in official projects. The higher the confidence in the government’s performance, the lower the level of public engagement is. Moreover, due to the consideration of self-interest or lack of environmental awareness, those who oppose waste incineration in waste terminal disposal tend to take a non-participatory role in waste sorting programs. Therefore, we suggest that the government have more diverse shareholders in environmental protection, so it should expand public participation through education, publicity, mobilization, and incentives.

The Perception of Environmental Information Disclosure on Rural Residents’ Pro-Environmental Behavior

“…The selection of control variables in this paper is similar to that of Yang et al [70]. Yin et al demonstrated that public environmental concerns have no significant impact on their environmental engagement [60], considering gender, age, and income levels as control variables. Also, Chen et al studied the relationship between environmental information and public participation, gender, age, education level and income included in the control variables, and they were hardly noticeable [50].…”

“…In addition, environmental concerns have been shown to mediate the relationship between waste sorting and green consumption behavior [22,38,47,59]. On the other hand, public environmental concerns have been proven to have no significant impact on people's environmental participation [60]. There are still questions about the impact of PEC on PEB.…”

“…The increase in family income will promote citizens' individual PEB [42]. Educational level is an essential factor in predicting PEB because it can raise citizens' awareness of the beneficial external impacts of PEB [60,67]. In addition, people who are active outdoors are more likely to feel the effects of environmental pollution [68].…”

The Impact of Environmental Information Disclosure on Environmental Governance Satisfaction

“…In addition, public participation is an integral part of a modern environmental governance system. Public participation is also closely related to government environmental information disclosure [19]. The government takes environmental information disclosure as its leading role and has established a widely supervised public opinion network.…”

Government Trust, Environmental Pollution Perception, and Environmental Governance Satisfaction

“…Modern environmental governance needs to involve the public in the environmental governance system, which can play the role of pressure transmission and supervision and urge the implementation of environmental protection policies [ 17 ]. Yin et al, found that by mobilizing the public to participate in environmental governance through education, publicity, mobilization, and incentives, etc., the government can effectively improve the public’s awareness of environmental protection and improve the performance of environmental governance [ 18 ]. Wu believes that the quality and satisfaction of environmental governance can be effectively improved by incorporating the public into the environmental governance system as a party of diversified governance and giving play to the subjective initiative of the public [ 19 ].…”