Participatory Environmental Governance Research Articles

How to Enhance Public Participation in Environmental Governance? Evidence from China

Public participation in environmental governance plays a pivotal role in fostering a healthy and sustainable relationship between society and the environment. Despite the convenience afforded by the internet, the level of participation among Chinese citizens remains notably low. Thus, enhancing public enthusiasm for environmental governance is imperative, particularly given the paucity of academic research in this area. To address this gap, we employed the volume of messages on a leadership message board as a proxy for measuring the motivation behind public participation in environmental governance. Utilizing a provincial panel regression analysis, we investigated the determinants of public participation and subsequently conducted a mechanism analysis. Our findings reveal that deteriorating local air quality correlates with heightened motivation for public involvement in environmental governance. Additionally, increased public attention to environmental issues significantly amplifies this motivation, with the availability of internet access and the degree of emphasis placed by local governments on public participation further facilitating this process. This study contributes a theoretical and empirical foundation for enhancing public engagement in environmental governance, thereby fostering the development of a sustainable society.

Research on the driving factors of rural residents' pro-environmental behavior under the background of frequent heat waves

Heat wave events have frequently occurred worldwide in recent years, and continuous high temperatures have severely impacted human life and ecosystems. Given this problem, the government and the public must cooperate closely to participate in global environmental governance. Among them, pro-environmental behavior is the most significant form for citizens to participate in environmental protection and fulfill social responsibilities. It plays an essential role in mitigating extremely high temperatures worldwide and achieving "carbon neutrality" and sustainable development of the world environment. Based on this, the study utilized the field survey data of 554 respondents from 14 villages in Xi'an and applied a structural equation model that integrates the theory of planned behavior and protection motivation theory to identify the main determinants of the pro-environmental behavior of rural dwellers. The research reported that: 1) The integrated model of the theory of planned behavior and protection motivation theory is suitable for studying people's pro-environmental behavior in the context of heat waves. 2) Heat risk perception, response efficacy, self-efficacy, and subjective norms significantly improved rural residents' pro-environmental behavior. In contrast, response cost had an opposite negative impact on rural residents' pro-environmental behavior. Among them, subjective norms had the most considerable effect. Based on these, we recommend that local governments promote public participation in environmental governance through the following methods: 1) Strengthen the publicity and education of heat wave knowledge and improve public awareness of heat wave risks. 2) Increase investment in environmental protection facilities and reward the public for environmental protection behavior to reduce the cost of the public's pro-environmental behavior. 3) Give full play to the leading role of government cadres and improve the public's awareness of environmental protection through the impact of the social environment.

The Role of Social Fairness Perceptions in Farmers’ Continued Participation in Environmental Governance: A China Scenario

The Role of Social Fairness Perceptions in Farmers’ Continued Participation in Environmental Governance: A China Scenario

The impact of public participation in environmental governance on the technical efficiency of enterprise

This paper investigates the impact of public participation in environmental governance on the technical efficiency at the firm-level. Using the stochastic frontier method to measure the technological efficiency, we find that the average technical efficiency of enterprises has gradually increased, and the distribution of technical efficiency of enterprises varies by region. We further show that public participation in environmental governance can significantly improve enterprises’ technical efficiency. Finally, the heterogeneity analysis shows that our findings are more pronounced in state-owned firms and small firms.

Corporate green technology innovation under external pressure: a public and media perspective

The presence of external environmental constraints has the potential to impact corporate decision-making behavior regarding production and spur innovative activities. This study focuses on a sample of Chinese A-share-listed corporations to investigate the influence of public environmental concerns (PEC) on corporate green technology innovation (GTI) within the framework of public participation in environmental governance. Moreover, this study explores the synergistic effects of media concerns and PEC. The main conclusions of this study are as follows: (1) PEC is a driving force for corporate GTI. Endogeneity and robustness tests support this finding. (2) Government environmental regulation and corporate environmental responsibility are critical mediating variables. (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that PEC significantly impacts the GTI of state-owned corporations, high-tech corporations, and corporations that have obtained ISO 14001 certification. (4) Media concerns enhance GTI and exhibit a strong synergistic effect with PEC. Positive media news strengthens the “incentive effect” of PEC, while negative news plays a “pushing role.” This study provides theoretical and empirical support for constructing an environmental governance mechanism for the public, media, corporations, and government.

Global Citizenship: Towards a Concept for Participatory Environmental Protection

ABSTRACT The global environmental crisis demands urgent attention and comprehensive action. While governments must prioritise environmental protection and climate change mitigation, the continued depletion of natural resources calls for innovative approaches. One such approach is the Environmental Global Citizenship theory, which offers a perspective on participatory environmental governance while emphasising cultural diversity. The article argues that the idea of global environmental citizenship can help address the challenges associated to the global environmental crisis, outlining a vast theoretical framework to this notion, grounded in a thorough literature review and legal examination of global environmental agreements. Environmental Global Citizenship is presented as a critical, yet non-exclusive strategy for global environmental stewardship, simultaneously advocating for a model of global integration that is rooted in cultural diversity. The manuscript underscores that the concept of Environmental Global Citizenship should form one necessary aspect of a more extensive environmental protection global strategy.

Organising Stakeholder Participation in Global Climate Governance: The Effects of Resource Dependency and Institutional Logics in the Green Climate Fund

Public or stakeholder participation in environmental governance has been strongly advocated within the United Nations (UN) since the early 1990s. A relatively new mechanism for global climate finance that emphasises stakeholder engagement is the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a UN strategy for channelling funds from the Global North to the Global South. Drawing on previous critical approaches to multi-stakeholder involvement in global governance, this article explores stakeholder involvement within the GCF. The study combines ideas from institutional logics and resource dependency to provide a better understanding of how stakeholder arrangements are shaped in climate organisations. Results show that the GCF stakeholder arrangement favours private sector stakeholders – stakeholders that take a technical and apolitical approach to climate finance – and disfavours smaller, less resourceful stakeholders as well as those who perform a politicised watchdog function.

The impact of public environmental concern on environmental pollution: The moderating effect of government environmental regulation.

As environmental problems continue to intensify, public environmental awareness and participation have become key forces in a modernized environmental governance system. Recognizing the importance of public participation in environmental governance, this study explores the influence of public pressure on environmental pollution and its implications for China's long-term environmental management efforts. Using statistical and internet search data from 284 prefecture-level cities between 2011 and 2020, the study finds that a 1% increase in public environmental concern leads to a 0.009% reduction in pollution. The study also highlights the strengthening effect of government environmental regulation on the impact of public environmental concern. Moreover, regional heterogeneity analysis reveals a stronger effect of public environmental concern in cities facing low economic pressure. The findings of the study provide a reference for the construction of a coordinated and sustainable environmental governance model in China as well as in developing countries.

Aesthetics, Technology, and Social Harmony: Constructing a “Green China” Image Through Eco-documentaries

ABSTRACT As China’s environmental problems have been thrust into the limelight of both domestic and international media, the Chinese government is eager to present a positive country image in terms of environmental planning and protection. Against this backdrop, this study aims to investigate how a “Green China” image is constructed through state-sanctioned eco-documentaries. Drawing on the Attitude System in Appraisal theory and multimodal discourse analysis, the study develops an analytical framework to investigate country image as semantic categories, as well as how it is constructed through multimodal resources. The analysis shows that these documentaries create an eco-friendly country image through: (1) highlighting the significance and desirability of the Chinese landscape (appreciation), (2) constructing a positive image of Chinese social actors in terms of environmental protection (judgment), and (3) depicting non-human characters’ happiness and security of living in China (affect). These positive attitudes reflect and constitute China’s green image branding practices shaped by the entangled forces of the Party-state’s rejuvenation of traditional culture, its development of globally competitive green technologies, and its promotion of participatory environmental governance.

Study of Farmers’ Willingness to Participate in Environmental Governance Based on Recycling, Reduction and Resourcing

In order to establish a green and low-carbon agricultural economic system based on the principles of recycling, reduction and resource utilization, to promote a comprehensive green transformation of the economic development and to achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, this article examines the farmers’ willingness to participate in rural environmental governance. Through a questionnaire survey in the Fujian, Anhui and Shanxi provinces, this article explores the influence of homogeneous and heterogeneous relationships in social networks on the farmers’ willingness to participate in rural environmental governance using a logit model and tries to reveal the deeper mechanisms. The results show that: (1) heterogeneous relationships have a significant positive effect on farmers’ participation in rural environmental governance, but homogeneous relationships do not have a significant effect. (2) The larger the size of the social network, the weaker the farmers’ willingness to participate in rural environmental governance. (3) Age and education level have significant effects on willingness to participate. The older the age, the weaker the willingness to participate; the higher the education level, the stronger the willingness to participate. (4) The larger the number of family members, the stronger the farmers’ willingness to participate in environmental governance. (5) The subjective cognitive status of farmers also has an important influence on their willingness to participate. The more environmental knowledge is acquired, the stronger the willingness to participate in rural environmental governance. Therefore, to promote rural environmental management, there is an urgent need to keep modern farmers on rural land and to make the countryside a beautiful space for living and working with complete living functions.

How effective is authoritarian environmentalism？ —evidence from China

Authoritarian environmentalism (AE) in China is embedded in the historical evolution of political centralization and has obvious path dependence; however, its effectiveness lacks empirical evidence. In the light of the cognitive motivation theory and the corpus linguistics, this study uses the multigrain Chinese word segmentation algorithm to construct the will index of provincial and central governments' environmental governance. With this will index and the provincial panel data in China from 2004 to 2017, this paper systematically examines the effectiveness and spatial heterogeneity of AE with the System GMM method. First, there is a negative correlation between the central government's will for environmental governance and environmental quality in provincial administrative regions, and top–down AE, characterized by political centralization, is less effective in China. However, the interaction term coefficients between the central and provincial governments are significantly positive for environmental governance. Second, from the perspective of sub-regions, effectiveness shows spatial heterogeneity across Eastern, Central, and Western China. Third, in Chinese-style AE, the public's environmental appeal has not received sufficient attention, and people's participation in environmental governance is limited. Finally, this study discusses ways to improve Chinese-style AE in China's institutional context and political system.

A public participation approach in the environmental governance of industrial parks

Public participation in environmental governance is crucial for sustainable development in industrial parks. The present study employs grounded theory to analyze the complete process of public participation in environmental governance within China's S Industrial Park. Specifically, this study investigates the reasons for public's absence in environmental management and identifies the strategies for achieving sustainable and effective participation. We found that lack of institutional guarantee systems and insufficient ability of public hinder public participation, while interest and institutional space motivate public participation. To achieve sustained and effective participation, a multi-stakeholder environmental governance platform is necessary. We also strategies for enhancing participation, including forming mutually beneficial relationship, promoting community organizations, and encouraging information disclosure.

Pulp and participation: Assessing the legitimacy of participatory environmental governance in Umkomaas, South Africa

The Sappi Saiccor mill in Umkomaas, KwaZulu Natal (KZN) Province, is a global pulp producer. It is also a major emitter of noxious substances in the heavily polluted and historically marginalised South Durban area. Taking a qualitative, narrative approach, this paper examines Saiccor's legacy of contamination, community opposition to the mill, and responses of state actors responsible for governing industrial risk. Through a conceptual framework combining theories around participatory environmental governance, legitimacy and state capture, the article explores the extent to which measures deployed by/on behalf of the Sappi Saiccor mill to engage with local residents and activists can be considered legitimate. The paper argues that prevalent corporate instrumentalism and a lack of political will continue to undermine the legitimacy of community engagement processes, which remain characterised by mistrust. It concludes the South African state cannot be relied upon to support genuinely inclusive, deliberative, empowering and reflexive governance practices. It is therefore left to organised civil society to force discourse beyond hegemonic, ecologically-modernised, technocentric ideals, and to bring issues of power, agency, and social justice to the fore of public and policy debate. The way might then be paved for strong political leadership committed to transparent, equitable environmental governance processes.

The relationship between public participation in environmental governance and corporations’ environmental violations

We explore the relationship in China between public participation in environmental governance and corporations’ environmental violations. We do so by collecting data on unlisted corporations’ environmental violations from 2012 to 2015 and manually matching these data with the number of environment-related proposals made by People's Congress deputies of different provinces. We find that public participation in environmental governance significantly decreases the number of environmental violations by corporations. We use the Eco-environmental Credit Policy as a policy shock in a difference-in-differences regression to confirm our finding. We conclude that public participation in environmental governance increases the number of local environmental regulations and thus restrains environmental violations by corporations.

Is environmental tax legislation effective for pollution abatement in emerging economies? Evidence from China

This study estimates the effect of environmental tax legislation on air pollution, using the implementation of China’s Environmental Protection Tax Law (EPTL) as a quasi-natural experiment. For cities which have been authorized to raise tax rates by the EPTL, the air quality index (AQI) is 2.36 lower after the reform. The effect is reinforced in cities with stricter tax enforcement, lower fiscal stress, as well as higher initial pollution levels. Heterogeneity analyses show that the reform is more effective in cities with lower levels of marketization and legalization, as well as in developed cities. In addition, the impact of the reform is more significant in cities with higher levels of public participation in environmental governance, higher tax competition levels, and higher share of secondary industry. A series of robustness tests corroborates the results. This paper provides evidence that environmental tax legislation is efficacious in pollution abatement for developing economies.

Women Participation in the Fight for Climate Justice: India’s Future

UN’s SDG No. 5 provides for achieving women’s equality and empowers them. However, achieving this goal has been a dream. This is primarily because discrimination against females in India has been practiced since birth and continues at every level. Hence, the present study focuses on the international obligation laid down for each nation to ensure gender justice at every level of environmental governance. The article analyzes various provisions enunciated in various international and national instruments. The author concludes that women’s participation in environmental governance should not be merely something that is only mentioned in the policy documents but should also be achieved. This is being done with the help of participatory environmental governance and the inclusion of women at every decision-making level.

A Study on the Impact of Organizing Environmental Awareness and Education on the Performance of Environmental Governance in China.

The advancement of technology and economic development has raised the standard of living and at the same time brought a greater burden to the environment. Environmental governance has become a common concern around the world, and although China’s environmental governance has achieved some success, it is still a long way from the ultimate goal. This paper empirically analyzes the impact of environmental publicity and education on environmental governance performance, using public participation as a mediator. The results show that: the direct effect of environmental publicity and education on environmental governance performance is not significant; environmental publicity and education have a significant positive effect on public participation; public participation significantly contributes to environmental governance performance; public participation shows a good mediating effect between environmental publicity and education and environmental governance performance. The government should adopt diversified environmental protection publicity and education in future environmental governance, and vigorously promote public participation in environmental governance so that the goal of environmental governance can be fundamentally accomplished by all people.

Government responsive selectivity and public limited mediation role in air pollution governance: Evidence from large scale text data content mining

Social media has been widely discussed as an informal way for the public to present their environmental appeals. However, evidence on whether and how the government's decision-making will take the public in the non-Western electoral system under consideration remains limited. In this study, we extracted 9.25 million haze-related posts from Sina Weibo and analyzed the topics using the latent Dirichlet allocation topic model. Furthermore, we provide evidence of the Chinese governments’ responsiveness and the role of online public participation in environmental governance. The results show that the Chinese government responds to the public, both online and offline. Specifically, when online public appeal increases by 1%, the local government's posts on social media increase by 0.347%, and investment and regulations increase by 0.0676% and 0.074%, respectively, in the next phase. However, there are selective characteristics of government response: the local government is more concerned about its “political achievements” than undertaking “governance responsibility.” Furthermore, online public participation plays a minor role in the implementation of regulations.

Influence mechanisms of the National Pollution Source Census on public participation and environmental consciousness in China

The National Pollution Source Census has been conducted in China to strengthen environmental supervision and management while mobilizing the public to participate in census work. Public participation usually plays an important role in environmental governance, but its development in China is relatively inadequate at present. However, the implementation of the National Pollution Source Census has created favorable conditions for promoting public participation. To explore the influence of the National Pollution Source Census on public participation, we conducted a nationwide questionnaire-based survey, recording the public's perceptions and behaviors related to environmental issues following the census. Structural equation modeling and logistic regression were conducted to analyze the data. The main findings indicate the following. First, the implementation of the National Pollution Source Census has had a strong positive impact on environmental consciousness, which, in turn, has had a positive effect on public participation. Environmental consciousness plays a fully mediating role in the relationship between the implementation of the National Pollution Source Census and public participation. Second, among the measurement indicators of the implementation of the National Pollution Source Census, environmental information disclosure, the extent of the popularization of environmental pollution knowledge, media-based publicizing of the significance of pollution source censuses, and the legislation-driven establishment of channels for public participation have a significant positive impact on environmental consciousness and public participation. Third, demographic characteristics such as the age and income of the public further affect their environmental consciousness and participation in environmental governance activities. • Implementing the NPSC strongly improves public's environmental consciousness (EC). • EC positively affects public participation (PP) in environmental governance. • China's NPSC has a strong positive impact on PP via EC's mediating effect. • Info disclosure promotes public EC and motivates PP in environmental governance. • Public's age and income significantly affect their EC and PP in environmental governance.

Incorporating spatial effects to assess the impact of public participation in environmental governance on PM2.5 pollution reduction: evidence from China

Incorporating spatial effects to assess the impact of public participation in environmental governance on PM2.5 pollution reduction: evidence from China