Social Capital, Environmental Knowledge, and Pro-Environmental Behavior.

Qinyuan Wan,Wencui Du

doi:10.3390/ijerph19031443

Abstract

As the value form of public access to environmental information, the impact of social capital on pro-environmental behavior cannot be ignored. Based on the data of the Chinese General Social Survey 2013 (CGSS2013), this study measures social capital from four aspects—social trust, social norms, social network, and social participation—and it empirically tests the impact of social capital on private and public pro-environmental behavior. The study finds that social capital helps promote pro-environmental behavior. Specifically, the more the public abides by social norms, the higher the degree of social participation, and the stronger the willingness to adopt private and public pro-environmental behaviors. However, the improvement of social trust only has a significant impact on the private environmental behaviors, and the expansion of the social network scale only has a significant impact on the public pro-environmental behaviors. The enhancement of social capital enriches environmental knowledge and promotes pro-environmental behaviors. The mechanism test shows that environmental knowledge plays an intermediary role in the path of social capital affecting individual pro-environmental behavior. The improvement of social capital has a significant impact on the environmental knowledge of individuals with high subjective social class. The gender heterogeneity of social capital affecting environmental knowledge mainly stems from social trust and social network. The stronger the degree of social trust, the richer the environmental knowledge of women, and the social network mainly affects the knowledge level of men. In addition, the publics in the southern region are more likely to be affected by social trust and improve environmental knowledge. Based on the above research conclusions, this paper puts forward policy suggestions on institutional aspects, such as increasing support for informal environmental organizations, carrying out differentiated sustainable development education, and improving the mechanism of environmental information communication.

Highlights

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralTo further promote the modernization of the ecological environmental governance system and capacity, in March 2020, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the Guidance on Building a Modern Environmental Governance System, which clearly stated that the participation channels of the public in environmental governance should be unimpeded, and a good pattern of social participation in environmental governance should be further formed
Referring to the practice of Stephen and Philip [15], this paper explores the impact of social capital on the pro-environmental behavior of the private domain and public domain from four aspects: social trust, social norms, social network, and social participation
We treated private and public domain pro-environmental behavior as dependent variables, social trust, social norms, social networks, and social participation as independent variables, and obtained the regression of model (1); the results are shown in columns (5)

Summary

Introduction

To further promote the modernization of the ecological environmental governance system and capacity, in March 2020, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the Guidance on Building a Modern Environmental Governance System, which clearly stated that the participation channels of the public in environmental governance should be unimpeded, and a good pattern of social participation in environmental governance should be further formed. Public participation in environmental protection will largely reduce the overall cost of environmental governance and improve governance efficiency. It is important to promote the public to take pro-environmental behavior and improve environmental participation. Promoting the formation of public pro-environmental behavior and public participation in environmental governance has not been proposed in recent years but rather gradually formed with the development of China’s environmental protection cause. 1989, the 11th session of the Standing Committee of the 17th National People’s Congress with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Methods

Results

Conclusion