Understanding China’s transition to environmental information transparency: citizens’ protest attitudes and choice behaviours

Abstract

ABSTRACT Environmental information transparency signifies a transition from the top-down environmental management towards participatory governance. The cognitive pathways through which environmental information disclosure (EID) can mobilize public support are underinvestigated. This study pioneers in investigating latent links between different EID approaches, citizen’s protest attitudes, and choice behaviours with regard to urban river restoration projects in two Chinese cities with varying levels of environmental information transparency, Guangzhou and Shaoguan (south China). A flexible Hybrid Mixed Logit Model is recruited to analyse responses of choice experiment surveys. Three latent variables are identified: distrust of government, individual environmental responsibility, and environmental information sufficiency. Our results reveal that (1) both EID approaches could not boost respondents’ trust in government, (2) active information access is associated weak individual environmental responsibility and unsupportive decisions, and (3) passive information access could neither equip citizens with information they need nor encourage their supportive decisions. The city-level environmental information transparency might determine the frequency of environmental information access, but cannot change citizens’ choice decisions. We propose to align the mismatch between the environmental information required by the citizens and those disseminated by the relevant governmental authorities, which is crucial to create social trust, enhance individual environmental responsibility, and improve EID efficiency.