Department of Sociology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jan 4;19(1):537. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19010537.
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.
在经济繁荣时期，中国政府主要关注经济发展；然而，出现了许多环境问题。有证据表明，中国人的环保行为（PEB）在亚洲处于较低水平。然而，这与他们高质量的环境知识并不匹配。本文利用中国综合社会调查数据库，在更广泛的背景下探讨了环境知识与 PEB 之间的相关性。随后，将环境感知和后物质主义价值观（PMV）作为中介和调节变量纳入结构方程模型，并通过探索性因子分析使每个变量保持稳健和一致。实证结果表明：（i）具有较高环境知识的个体通常表现出更高的环保行为热情；（ii）环境感知在环境知识与 PEB 之间起着部分中介作用；（iii）PMV 系统地调节环境行为的形成；（iv）与公众相比，私有环境行为中环境知识与 PEB 的关系显著更高。研究结果可为中国政府和环境非政府组织提供依据，以有效传播环境知识，倡导后物质主义生活方式，并提高在线媒体对环境问题报道的真实性。
