Pollution, demographic, and public willingness to participate in environment protection in China-a study based on micro-survey data.

Abstract

Previous study found out that Chinese household have a higher awareness of environmental protection but less positive initiative to protect the environment. With the increasing Chinese income, higher education, and changing environment state, public awareness and behavior on environment protection are changing. This paper tries to find out the current public willingness to participate in environment protection, by using the latest data from China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) which is investigated in 2017 that covered 31 provinces with a sample of more than 40 thousand households. Besides, logit regression model is adopted to find out the impact of pollution and household demographic on environment protection behavior. The results show that around 71.6% of surveyed households have willingness to pay for the environment protection. Rural residents and higher educated individuals are more likely to participate in environment protection. However, things are different if they face different degrees of pollution. Results can be explained with China's current economic situation and would have some implications for future study on China's public willingness to pay for the environment.