Abstract
Although the positive relationship between religion and environmental behavior has aroused heated debate, empirical research on the relationship between religion and public pro-environmental behavior is still relatively insufficient. This paper aims to explore the group differences in the influence of religious identity on public pro-environmental behavior and the mediating role of environmental risk perception in religious identity and public pro-environmental behavior. Using the Chinese General Social Survey data of 2013 for empirical analysis, this study’s results show that there are group differences in the impact of religious identity on public pro-environmental behavior. Women with a religious identity are more willing to engage in public pro-environmental behavior than those without a religious identity. Additionally, people over the age of 45 with a religious identity are more willing to participate in public pro-environmental behavior than those without a religious identity. Furthermore, political participants with a religious identity are more willing to practice public pro-environmental behavior than those without a religious identity. In addition, we found that environmental risk perception can act as partial mediation in religion and public pro-environmental behavior. In other words, religious identities are deeply embedded in local political and social culture. In order to correctly understand the relationship between religion and public pro-environmental behavior, it is necessary to consider religious identity in a specific cultural background.
Highlights
Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has faced an unprecedented environmental crisis
From the perspective of housing status, the results suggest that the religious people whose household property rights are their own or their spouses are more willing to practice public pro-environmental behavior than those without a religious identity and the religious people who have their own household property are more willing to practice public pro-environmental behavior than those without household property, which indicates that there is an interaction between religious identity and household property
Western scholars have been exploring the complex relationship between religion and the environment scholars have been exploring the complex relationship between religion and the environment
Summary
Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has faced an unprecedented environmental crisis. Rapid population expansion and economic growth have caused the largest “environmental disaster” in history. The unilateral emphasis on economic development has increased the level of “turbidity” in modern social spaces to a degree not comparable in the history. Water pollution, marine pollution, solid waste pollution, and toxic pollution have spread endlessly throughout society. Land desertification, acid rain, agricultural land depletion, and animal extinction have mercilessly swept through the social space (Harris 2006).
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