Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
J Environ Manage. 2022 Oct 1;319:115692. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.115692. Epub 2022 Jul 9.
Worldwide environmental information disclosure (EID) has been widely promoted as a policy approach to establish transparent governments, enhance public environmental awareness, and foster participatory environmental governance. While information disclosure and transparency are inherently incentivised within democratic regimes, how and through what pathways an increased flow of environmental information in the absence of democracy could lead to favourable public support for environmental/ecological projects remain under-investigated. Particularly, there exists very limited literature which compares how EID is associated with public environmental choices between different sociopolitical contexts. Taking Brussels (Belgium) and Guangzhou (China) as a comparative case, this study examines the association between citizens' perceived trustworthiness of various environmental information sources and their choice decisions regarding urban river restoration initiatives in contrasting socialpolitical contexts. Latent class modelling of two paralleled discrete choice experiments unveils a consistent classification of three distinctive groups for each city and also the combined sample, including Enthusiastic Supporters (Class 1, who are cost-insensitive and supportive of all proposed changes), Pragmatic Supporters (Class 2, who are cost-sensitive, prefer some changes they favour), and Non-Supporters (Class 3, who are unwilling to support the proposed initiatives). Incorporating respondents' trustworthiness in information sources as covariates in class membership likelihood function, respondents' membership is found to be associated solely with the most trusted information source, i.e., social contacts in Guangzhou, third parties in Brussels, and social contacts for the whole sample. Holding trust toward the most-trusted information source can increase the probability of being a member of Class 1, otherwise, more likely being a member of Class 3. Taken together with the insignificance of the variable denoting a respondent's city in explaining class membership, this study reveals that the variations in the EID levels (matured vs. emerging) and sociopolitical contexts (democratic vs. non-democratic) cannot significantly shape citizens' environmental decisions. Instead, it is respondents' perceived trustworthiness of information outlets that plays a positive role in their supportive decisions. These analytical results offer new insights about the role of EID in environmental governance and call for instilling institutional trust in China and relational trust in Belgium for facilitating effective communication and pro-environmental behaviours across the whole community.
全球环境信息披露（EID）已被广泛推广为建立透明政府、提高公众环境意识和促进参与式环境治理的政策方法。虽然信息披露和透明度在民主制度中具有内在的激励作用，但在没有民主的情况下，更多的环境信息流如何以及通过什么途径可能导致公众对环境/生态项目的有利支持，这方面的研究仍然不足。特别是，在不同的社会政治背景下，关于 EID 如何与公众的环境选择相关联的文献非常有限。本研究以布鲁塞尔（比利时）和广州（中国）为比较案例，考察了在不同社会政治背景下，公民对各种环境信息来源的信任度与其对城市河流修复倡议的选择决策之间的关系。对两个平行离散选择实验的潜在类别建模揭示了每个城市以及综合样本中三个不同群体的一致分类，包括热情支持者（第 1 类，对所有提议的变化都不敏感且支持）、实用支持者（第 2 类，对成本敏感，偏好他们赞成的一些变化）和不支持者（第 3 类，不愿意支持拟议的倡议）。将受访者对信息来源的信任度作为类别成员可能性函数中的协变量纳入，发现受访者的成员资格仅与最受信任的信息来源相关，即广州的社会联系人、布鲁塞尔的第三方和整个样本的社会联系人。对最受信任的信息源的信任可以提高成为第 1 类成员的概率，否则，更有可能成为第 3 类成员。综合考虑表示受访者所在城市的变量在解释类别成员身份方面的不显著性，本研究表明，EID 水平（成熟度与新兴度）和社会政治背景（民主与非民主）的变化不能显著影响公民的环境决策。相反，是受访者对信息来源的感知可信度在他们的支持性决策中发挥了积极作用。这些分析结果提供了关于 EID 在环境治理中的作用的新见解，并呼吁在中国树立制度信任，在比利时树立关系信任，以促进整个社区的有效沟通和有利于环境的行为。
