Relations among Pro-Environmental Behavior, Environmental Knowledge, Environmental Perception, and Post-Materialistic Values in China.

Jinchen Xie,Chuntian Lu

doi:10.3390/ijerph19010537

Abstract

During the economic boom, China’s government was mainly concerned with economic development; however, numerous environmental problems have arisen. Evidence suggests that Chinese individuals’ pro-environmental behavior (PEB) is at a low level in Asia. However, it does not match their high-quality environmental knowledge. In this paper, the database of the Chinese General Social Survey was used to explore the correlation between environmental knowledge and PEB in a broader context. Subsequently, environmental perception and post-materialistic values (PMV) were taken as the mediator and moderator into structural equation modeling, and every variable kept robust and consistent through exploratory factor analysis. The empirical results indicated that: (i) individuals with higher environmental knowledge always show higher passion to PEB; (ii) environmental perception plays a partially mediating role between environmental knowledge and PEB; (iii) PMV moderate the formation of environmental behavior systematically; and (iv) compared with public counterpart, the relation between environmental knowledge and PEB is significantly higher in private environmental behavior. The study results could become the basis for the Chinese government and environmental NGOs to effectively spread environmental knowledge, advocate a post-materialistic lifestyle, and improve the authenticity of online media reports on environmental issues.

Highlights

With the rapid development of China’s economy and the continuous advancement of urbanization [1], a series of environmental problems are becoming increasingly worse, including the greenhouse effect, water pollution, acid rain, and desertification [2]
pro-environmental behavior (PEB); (iii) post-materialistic values (PMV) moderate the formation of environmental behavior systematically; and (iv) compared with public counterpart, the relation between environmental knowledge and PEB is significantly higher in private environmental behavior
The correlations between each adjacent variable are statistically significant, except the correlation between materialistic-value and public PEB, which indicated that our data highly support the subsequent Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) model

Summary

Introduction

With the rapid development of China’s economy and the continuous advancement of urbanization [1], a series of environmental problems are becoming increasingly worse, including the greenhouse effect, water pollution, acid rain, and desertification [2]. This is attributed to the decline in Chinese pro-environmental behavior (PEB). Abundant literature has tried to fill this correlation gap between environmental knowledge and environmental behavior, and found that environmental knowledge affects PEB mainly through two systematic methods [5]. The relevance between environmental knowledge and environmental behavior might change with individual demographic char-

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion