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Environmental Perceptions, Happiness and Pro-environmental Actions in China

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Abstract

We use the 2010 and 2013 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data to examine the relationships between perceived severity of environmental issues, individual happiness and pro-environmental actions. We find that perceived severity of environmental issues has little, if not insignificant, correlation with happiness, but it has significant correlation with pro-environmental actions. We also find that the perceptions of both central and provincial governments’ efforts in addressing environmental issues are associated with individual happiness, willingness to pay for environment-friendly products and pro-environmental actions, no matter whether objective measures of provincial environmental issues and efforts are controlled for. And these correlations are robust across the two waves of CGSS. The findings imply that governments should not only allocate resources to addressing environmental issues but also improve communication in order to help citizens better understand governments’ efforts.

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Notes

  1. Family income and provincial GDP per capita have been transformed into CPI-weighted purchasing power measures by taking the natural logarithm of the respective variable to the provincial CPI ratio.

  2. This paper does not go into more detailed discussions of these control variables in order to focus on environment related variables, which are the variables of interest in the present study.

  3. The two waves of CGSS asked different sets of questions on environmental issues. We therefore analysed the two waves independently and used the 2013 wave as a robustness check for the results obtained from the 2010 wave for repeated questions and further elaborate on the questions that were not asked in the 2010 wave.

  4. Consistent with the literature, in our ordered logit results, which are not reported here, the key variables remain the same signs and significance as they are in OLS results.

  5. Results for the control variables (not shown in the tables but available from the authors) suggest that those respondents who are younger, married, female, physically and/or mentally healthier, better educated, wealthier, have a higher income, and live in the wealthier northern and western regions (relative to western region) are happier. In the willingness-to-pay specifications, those who are better educated, younger, wealthier, less physically sound, have better mental health and are religious are more willing to pay a higher price to improve environment quality. These results are consistent with the findings in existing studies in China.

  6. Please also see the discussions in Sect. 5, in which we find that frequent Internet users are more likely to take environmental actions in China.

  7. Recall that in the 2010 CGSS results perceptions of greater efforts by both central and provincial governments are associated with higher happiness among the full sample; that a perception of greater effort by the central government is associated with higher happiness among urban residents; and that perceived greater effort by provincial governments is associated with higher happiness among rural residents.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Ben Zhe Wang

  2. Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Zhiming Cheng

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  1. Ben Zhe Wang
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  2. Zhiming Cheng
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Correspondence to Ben Zhe Wang.

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Wang, B.Z., Cheng, Z. Environmental Perceptions, Happiness and Pro-environmental Actions in China. Soc Indic Res 132, 357–375 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-1218-9

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